


Beneath the Red Hills

by sowell



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Big Bang Challenge, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 12:05:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/849368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sowell/pseuds/sowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years ago, Sam Winchester failed the final trial, sending both brothers to opposite sides of the country. When Dean vanishes without a trace, Sam must figure out how to find his estranged brother and save a small town from the serial killer that's been terrorizing it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2013 SPN-J2-BigBang. It's kind of a tiny BigBang, but it's complete! Thanks so much to everyone on my flist who listened to me angst, to yohkobennington for the super-speedy and helpful beta, and most of all to sarahtoga for the beautiful artwork. Go here and leave her lots of feedback!

Castiel appears at midnight, just as the remains of a San Diego housewife have started throwing sparks into the night air. One minute Sam is alone in the cemetery, gaze drifting through the churning flames, the next he’s staring at Castiel across the open gravesite.  
  
He curses and nearly stumbles into the fire.  
  
“Dammit, Cas. What the hell are you doing here?”  
  
“Hello, Sam.”  
  
It’s been five years, but Castiel’s vessel hasn’t changed. His coat wavers in the heat-bent air, and his blue eyes cut across the distance. Sam knows, even before Castiel opens his mouth to answer. He feels it in his bones, suddenly icy despite the roaring fire.  
  
“It’s Dean. He needs your help.”  
  


*

  
“Still with the trenchcoat, huh?” Sam asks.  
  
Castiel looks down at himself, confusion and something that might be hurt knitting his eyebrows together.  
  
“I admit I’ve become attached,” he says. “Is there something wrong with my clothing?”  
  
“…nevermind. It’s great.”  
  
“Unless there’s some pressing matter with my coat, we need to talk about Dean.”  
  
“Right.” Sam takes a breath. “Sure. Do you want a beer?”  
  
There’s a mini-fridge in his motel room, and Sam drums the top of it with nervous fingers. Castiel is looking at him like he’s grown a second head, and Sam feels only slightly less monstrous.  
  
“Sam,” he says. “I’m well aware of the rift between you and your brother, but Dean – ”  
  
Sam shakes his head. “How did you find me, anyway?”  
  
“I’ve been checking on you periodically. I thought I might need to find you again someday.”  
  
“Dean’s idea?” Sam asks sharply.  
  
Castiel hesitates, and Sam puts up a hand. “You know what? I don’t want to know. Just tell me what’s going on.”  
  
“He’s gone, Sam. He was calling for me, and then he just disappeared. He’s left no clues that I can decipher, and I’m afraid you’re the only one who might be able to make sense of the research he left behind.”  
  
“I get it, I do,” Sam says desperately. “But there has to be someone else. Another hunter…Garth. Someone who knows him better someone…”  _Anyone but me_ , Sam’s brains supplies, and he shakes the vicious thought away. He clenches his left hand into a fist out of habit, feeling pain shoot across his palm. A wraith put a spike through his hand two years ago, and Sam fucked up the stitches, disoriented with poison and exhaustion. It’s never healed right. He uses the pain sometimes, to ward himself away from stupid decisions. Don’t go after a wraith alone. Don’t go home with the swaggering stranger from the bar. Don’t run back to Dean, out of habit or fear or anything else.  
  
“I’m the last person you should be asking,” he finishes.  
  
“Sam, he said your name. “  
  
Sam jerks up straight, the pain from his hand forgotten. “What?”  
  
“Right before he disappeared. It was a message, or maybe a warning. I don’t know, but I think he wanted me to come for you.”  
  
Sam’s heart is suddenly pounding. ”Are you sure?”  
  
“I’m not prone to mishearing,” Castiel says wryly. “I think it was a message.”  
  
“But…” Sam tries to sort through the jumble of his thoughts. “Why now? It’s been five years – he has to have gotten himself in trouble before. What’s different this time?”  
  
“I don’t know. I know he’s been taken by something powerful enough or knowledgeable enough to shield itself from me.” Castiel’s eyes are a penetrating blue, his shoulders slumped. He’s worried, like Castiel rarely is.  
  
Sam looks down. Fuck,  _Dean_. Dean doesn’t pray for help, and he doesn’t disappear without warning. Most of all, he doesn’t call for Sam. Not anymore.  
  
Maybe it’s their training, or maybe it’s instinct, or maybe it’s been too long since he’s heard Dean’s voice. He prods at the old wound inside of him and waits for the burning anger.  
  
There’s a dull ache instead, melting into a burgeoning panic. Dean needs help, and every cell in Sam’s body snaps to attention.  
  
He looks back up, and Castiel is still staring at him, earnest and supplicating.  
  
“Let me pack a bag,” he says. “And I’ll come with you.”  
  


*

  
The ride on angel express is as disorienting as always. One moment he’s in his hotel room, the next the scenery has changed around him. He has the impression of great speed even though his feet don’t seem to have left the ground. He wobbles, and Castiel catches his shoulder.  
  
Sam takes a moment to get his bearings. Dean’s motel room is plastered in dirt-and-moss motifs. The lamps are in the shape of grizzly bears with sparrows circling the shades. The peeling wallpaper is a dark plaid that coats the whole room in brown. The shag carpet looks grimy in the low lighting. Dean must hate it. Even more, he must hate having no one to make fun of it with.  
  
The whole place smells familiar, and it takes Sam a moment to realize it’s Dean’s scent. There’s a dark spot on the carpet that’s probably gun oil and a capped bottle of whiskey sitting on the table. Dean’s dirty socks are in a heap by the bed, and it sends a ridiculous jolt of nostalgia through Sam.  
  
There’s a second bed in the room; Sam doesn’t think Dean’s been working with a partner, but old habits are hard to break. Half the time Sam finds himself staring at an empty queen in his room with no memory of having requested it. Dean’s second bed is littered with newspaper clippings, crumpled scribblings, and haphazard books. Dean has always been shit at organizing his research.  
  
“People have been going missing for the last month,” Castiel supplies. “I did a search, but they’re either hidden from me or gone from the area.”  
  
“And Dean’s the latest one,” Sam says quietly.  
  
“He prayed to me for help around eight o’ clock this evening. I came almost immediately, but he had already disappeared by the time I arrived.”  
  
Sam shifts through a few missing person flyers. One has  _St. Agnes?_  written in Dean’s slanted script in the corner. Colin Murphy is the subject of the flyer. He looks about twelve years old, red hair, freckles, and cocky smile. He’s wearing a baseball cap. There are others as well. Joshua Harding was a middle-aged business man who went missing a month ago. Rachel Johnson was a local school teacher who went missing just before Colin. She’s blonde and pretty, and barely looks old enough to be out of college herself. Sam swallows and puts the sheaf of papers down.  
  
“Was he in the motel when he called for you?”  
  
Castiel shakes his head. “Very close, but not here. I had to check multiple rooms to find which one Dean was staying in.”  
  
Sam gets an unbidden image of Castiel flickering in and out of every room, startling the neighbors. He bites down on a smile.  
  
“You know, you could have just…” Sam pulls the curtain aside, and sure enough the Impala is parked outside the door like a foot soldier, waiting patiently.  
  
Castiel looks abashed. “Yes, that would have worked as well.”  
  
Sam sighs and sinks down in the chair by the window. Dean’s been missing nearly six hours. If Dean was taken, he could be two states away by now, too injured or incapacitated to call for Castiel again. It’s a long shot, but Sam pulls his phone from his back pocket and punches in Dean’s number. It’s stupid to think Dean wouldn’t have changed phones, but…  
  
Voicemail clicks in almost immediately.  _It’s Dean. You know what to do._  
  
Something tightens in Sam, a knife twist of grief. He hasn’t heard Dean’s voice in five years.  
  
“Okay,” he says to Castiel. His voice sounds rough to his own ears. “Let’s find him.”  
  


*

  
Cane Creek, North Carolina lies halfway up the western mountains. The sun is throwing pinpoints of light over the pine-studded horizon when Sam finally finishes sorting through all Dean’s paperwork. All together there are five missing residents, plus Dean. Sam can see why Dean was drawn to the case; it follows the same pattern as three other small towns up and down the eastern seaboard. All mountainous areas, all host to a series of vanishing residents. None of the victims ever found.  
  
Before every rash of disappearances there have been reports of a minor earthquake.  
  
“Demons,” Sam mutters. “Weird weather, people going off the map, gotta be…”  
  
“No,” Castiel says calmly, and Sam jumps. He’d almost forgotten Castiel was there.  
  
“Demons wouldn’t be able to hide from me. There’s something else involved.”  
  
“Then it’s demon-related. Something working for demons, or some kind of hell-creature.”  
  
Castiel looks troubled. “There are some creatures, very old, who have learned to shield themselves from angels and demons. But these creatures pre-date even humans, and they’re very powerful. Dragons, sea creatures, leviathan. If one of them has Dean then he’ll be very difficult to find.”  
  
“Hold on.” Sam roots through the mess of Dean’s notes and finds what he’s looking for. “Anything that looks like this?”  
  
Sam holds up a rough sketch of a dog on lined paper. Dean isn’t exactly Picasso, but he’s managed to create a vaguely canine-like shape in pencil, shaggy and shaded in. It has hulking shoulders and a lowered snout, and Sam shivers. He’s not sure if it’s meant to be truly frightening or if it’s just Dean’s crappy perspective work, but either way it has him thinking of hellhound claws and rancid breath, the ugly viscous blood drying on his shirt.  
  
Castiel shakes his head slowly. “I don’t recognize it.”  
  
There’s no explanation underneath, and no mention of a dog anywhere else in Dean’s notes. In the upper right hand of the page, Dean has scratched out a set of letters and numbers that don’t make sense in Sam’s bleary brain.  
  
 _teulu 97_  
  
Sam tries to speak the syllables in his head, but he can’t fit the sounds into any language he knows.  
  
“Maybe it’s a hellhound thing,” Sam posits tiredly. “Maybe Crowley’s behind the whole thing and he needs human sacrifice for some reason. It could have been a trap for Dean, or maybe – ” Sam cuts himself off with a yawn, eyes watering and chest expanding. He suddenly feels every minute of the last thirty hours; he’s been awake since long before Castiel came to find him in San Diego.  
  
“Sam?” Castiel prompts.  
  
“Yeah,” Sam responds wearily. “Hey, I know we’re sitting on a time-bomb here, but I need some sleep. I can’t pretext like this.”  
  
Castiel’s mouth thins slightly. “I can repair your cells so that you don’t need sleep. We can’t afford to waste anymore time.”  
  
He reaches out with two fingers, and Sam twists away.  
  
“Uh…thanks, but I’ll pass.”  
  
“Dean is…”  
  
“Missing, I know. I get it. I want to find him, too. But I need some sleep, here. Human sleep.”  
  
Castiel doesn’t look pleased, but he withdraws his hand. “How long?”  
  
“Three, maybe four hours. Look, if you want to help, put the interview transcripts in order from newest to oldest. And find me some food and coffee. Can you do that?”  
  
Castiel sighs. “Yes.”  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
He collapses out on the empty bed, right on top of the cheap, scratchy comforter. He buries his face in the pillow and tries to ignore the way it smells like Dean’s shampoo and aftershave, generic and minty. There’s a weird ache in his chest that he thought he left behind five years ago. He half-expects Dean to walk through the door any second, a shit-eating grin and _miss me?_  riding his lips. This hotel room is as empty as the last one, and the one before that, and every one before that for the last five years.  
  
“Wake me in four hours,” Sam says. “And Cas?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Thanks for coming to get me.”  
  


*

  
_5 Years Ago  
Topeka, Kansas  
  
Sam wakes up to the steady beeping of hospital machines and the smell of antiseptic. His whole body is numb, and his head feels like it’s webbed in cotton. The room is dim and bare, the TV eerily blank above him.  
  
Dean is propped up in the chair next to him, sleeping with his arms stiffly crossed. The skin around his eyes is puffy and dark like a bruise. Even in sleep, his mouth is pulled tight with worry. Sam tries to reach out and shake him awake, but the movement sends a twinge all up and down his arm. He has an IV stuck in the back of his hand, buried under layers of white bandages.  
  
He’s not as numb as he thought. Spikes of pain start to emerge in his consciousness – his legs, his back, his chest, his arms. His skin is burning like a low-grade fire, feverish in the tepid room. He can’t remember how he got here. He remembers ancient floorboards, a circle of red, and the slick slip of blood.  
  
“Dean,” he tries to say, but it’s barely a rasp.  
  
Dean’s eyes flick open, instantly awake. He’s moving before Sam can speak again, leaning over the bed rails.  
  
“Dude, you’re fine. I’m right here.”  
  
Sam tries to speak again, but there’s something over his face. He claws at it, irritation and panic mingling dully in his chest.  
  
Dean swears and grabs his wrists. There’s blood on Dean’s shirt, but Dean doesn’t look injured. Sam doesn’t think they were fighting anything, so it’s Sam’s then. All Sam’s.  
  
“Hold it, fuck,” Dean says. “Gimme a sec.” There’s movement by Sam’s ear, and then Dean’s lifting the oxygen mask off his face. Sam struggles to sit up, and Dean pushes him back with an irritated huff.  
  
“Take it easy, will you?” he says. He’s looking studiously elsewhere. There’s a dull dread expanding in Sam’s chest, and it has everything to do with the dark guilt in Dean’s eyes.  
  
“What happened?” he manages. His voice is ruined, throat raw and painful.  
  
“How do you feel?” Dean asks instead of answering, and it should be genuine concern, but it’s not. There’s something else, and Sam pushes up on his elbows. Memories are starting to leak back into him, fuzzy and feverish, but horribly real.  
  
“The last trial. Did I…?”  
  
“Talk about it later, okay?” Dean says, far too gentle. “Focus on yourself. You almost died, man. It’s been three days, and I….” He cuts himself off, rubbing his hands nervously against the front of his jeans.  
  
And Sam remembers. God, he remembers. And Dean…  
  
“Dean, what did you do?” he asks, and Dean closes his eyes._   
  


*

  
Castiel brings him dark, sweet coffee in the morning, and some sort of egg sandwich that’s better than Sam expected. He puts on the least wrinkled suit he can find, strolls out into the sunshine, then stops dead in front of the Impala. It feels wrong to drive her while Dean is missing. Besides, the keys have disappeared with Dean, and if Sam breaks a window and hotwires her, he’s pretty sure that will stop any reconciliation attempt in its tracks.  
  
Castiel touches his shoulder. “You have to,” he says gently. “I believe Dean will understand that.”  
  
Sam takes a breath. “Right.”  
  
He’s as gentle as he can be with the lock and the tangle of wires, but he can’t shake the image of Dean’s scowl.  
  
It feels wrong to be in the driver’s seat, off center and upside down. Even so, sinking into the seat feels good, like a guilty pleasure Sam’s been denying himself. There are tears and blood and sweat soaked into the leather. The car is Dad and Dean and safety, roadside breakfasts and impromptu swims and shelter from wind and rain and hail. It was Sam’s only home for eighteen years. He’ll never tell Dean how much he’s missed the Impala.  
  
Cane Creek doesn’t have a center. It has a main street, a few churches, and three schools. It’s a three-minute drive to the main drag, and two minutes further to the municipal buildings. Dean’s last interview was with the headmistress of the Sheldon P. Lafayette Middle School, so that’s where Sam starts.  
  
The headmistress is a rod-thin woman in her fifties with sleek gray hair and sharp eyes. She barely clears five feet, and yet Sam feels very small when she levels her gaze at him.  
  
“This is the second FBI visit this week,” she informs him. “I trust this is the last time the federal government intends to infringe on this school’s instructional time?”  
  
“Yes. Sorry,” Sam says hastily. “Ma’am.”  
  
“Good,” she says crisply. “Then what can I do for you?”  
  
“I’m actually here following up for my br- partner. I think you probably met him yesterday?”  
  
Her mouth purses distastefully. “Agent Palmer, I believe? More good looks than sense?”  
  
Sam winces. “That would be him.”  
  
“I didn’t care for his attitude,” she says, sparing Sam a look that says it’s somehow his fault.  
  
“Yeah,” Sam says wearily. “I get that a lot. If you could just confirm what you told him, that would be helpful.”  
  
“I’m afraid I wasn’t much help at all the first time,” she says. She swallows, and Sam sees the first real sign of distress in her eyes. “Rachel was young, but she was shaping up to be one of our most gifted teachers. Her students adored her. And Colin…” She clears her throat, and Sam looks down at his notebook, giving her a chance to compose herself.  
  
“He could be…a handful. But that’s to be expected, given his situation.”  
  
Sam raises his eyebrows. “Situation?”  
  
“Yes. Losing his parents and sister like that. Tragic.”  
  
Sam racks his brain, but there hadn’t been anything about Colin Murphy’s family in Dean’s notes. “And he lost them…how?” he asks, attempting to look pleasant instead of clueless.  
  
She shakes her head. “Like I explained to Agent Palmer, I was never privy to the details. I sent him to St. Agnes. It’s the only Catholic parish in the county, and they take custody of students with no place else to go – orphans, foster children in transition, that sort of population.”  
  
There are no transcripts from St. Agnes. Dean had never made it.  
  
“Right,” Sam says. “St. Agnes. That was my next stop.”  
  
The headmistress has more to say, but the rest is a rehash of Dean’s transcript. Five disappearances in the county over the last six weeks, and the last two from the middle school. Parents terrified, local cops on watch. Suspected serial killer.  
  
And one missing brother.  
  
The western mountains are shaded by evergreens, and the soil is red-brown that looks like dirt and blood. The drive to St. Agnes is straight uphill. Unlike the Presbyterian and Baptist churches, the Catholic parish is on the outskirts of town, hidden at the end of a dark, rocky drive. The church itself is a small, shabby building, nothing like the stone-and-stained-glass fortresses John used to take refuge in when Sam was a kid. The paint is chipped, the cross weathered and thin, and the front steps creak dangerously under Sam’s weight.  
  
The pastor meets him at the door, alerted by the headmistress. He’s seventy years if he’s a day, slow-moving and drawn. Sam has a sudden, fierce nostalgia for Pastor Jim, for his leashed energy and endless sprawl of weaponry. Pastor Jim was bravery and faith, and the only hunter besides Dean that Sam has ever wanted to be like.  
  
They stop in the office first. The young assistant smiles up at Sam with big green eyes and long fringed lashes, and he wishes more than anything that they didn’t remind him of Dean.  
  
“I’m looking for records,” he says, trying to temper the brusqueness of his voice. He’s never had Dean’s ability to charm and flirt when his mind is elsewhere. “Death, birth, and residency. Whatever you have.”  
  
She’s undaunted. “Of course,” she says, all dimples and lilting southern accent. “Anything for the FBI.”  
  
Thank god for southern hospitality.  
  
Sam asks for a tour while the assistant makes duplicates on their rickety old photocopier. The building doesn’t look big enough to house an orphanage, but the upper floor is made up of a narrow hallway with five rooms branching off. The one at the end of the hall leads to the choir loft, and the one closest to the stairs belongs to the pastor. The last three are for wards.  
  
“Colin was our only resident at the moment,” the pastor says, wheezing from the slow climb up the stairs. “He came to us from Boston this past fall. In trouble a lot at school, but he’s a good boy.”  
  
“In trouble how?” Sam probes.  
  
The pastor sighs. “Nothing unusual for a twelve-year-old boy who just lost his family. Some defiance with his teachers. A few fights. Showing off for the girls in class instead of doing his work. He was one of the strongest hitters in the local youth league.” The pastor sounds fond, and sad, and Sam flashes back to the photo of Colin Murphy in his baseball cap.  
  
“I see,” he says softly. Colin’s room is tiny and bare, cleared out by the local police. There are orange crime markers everywhere – his bed, the desk, the closet. One of the only things left is a framed picture on the bedside table. It’s Colin and his family, smiling and happy. Colin’s holding a giggling toddler up to the lens, and Sam realizes that must be his sister.  
  
“Can you tell me about his family?” Sam can’t take his eyes off the photo. It’s painful, somehow, to see what Colin Murphy’s life could have been.  
  
“Car accident,” the pastor says. “Tragic. The parents were killed instantly, and the baby girl died in the hospital later. Colin was thrown from the car and broke his collarbone. He has no other family and the Boston agencies were full, so he ended up here.”  
  
Shit. The room is suddenly too small, Colin’s bright smile too vivid. Sam presses shaking hands against his thighs to steady them. Whatever took Dean has no mercy, for kids or orphans or lost souls.  
  
The pastor puts a wizened hand on his shoulder. “Come on,” he says, and Sam can hear the sympathy there. “I’ll show you the rest of the parish.”  
  
Sam pockets the photo on the way out the door.  
  
The pastor likes to talk as much as most old men. In a voice like rustling paper, he gives Sam the history of the place. “St. Agnes is the first Catholic church in the county, and the last one standing,” he says proudly. “Most priests get moved around nowadays, but I’ve been pastor here for forty years.”  
  
“Wow,” Sam says, suitably impressed. “You must know everything about this town, then.”  
  
The pastor’s mouth turns upward. “Almost.”  
  
“The other victims, then. Did you know any of them?”  
  
The pastor gives him a strange look. “They didn’t tell you at the school?”  
  
Sam narrows his eyes. “Tell me what?”  
  
“Rachel Johnson was a ward of St. Agnes. She grew up right here, in the same room as Colin.”  
  


*

  
Castiel is waiting for him by the car, trenchcoat blaringly conspicuous in the humid Carolina sun. Sam gives him a tight-lipped look, then gets in the car. His hair is sticking to the back of his neck, and the Impala’s air conditioner is primitive at best. The Impala may be home, but his Hyundai had climate control.  
  
“Local library,” he says. “I might have found something.”  
  
The library is surprisingly modern, small but bustling. He finds his way to the reference section with the ease of experience. He takes over one broad table with Dean’s scattered research and his own notes and files from the day. Castiel watches with a furrowed brow.  
  
It takes over an hour to make his way through the church records, which date back to the early 1800’s. There are descriptions of several exorcisms, but none that would have left an unfriendly spirit behind. There are no murders on file, no mysterious deaths, no signs of a haunting. Moreover, there’s nothing to connect the other victims to St. Agnes. One of them was an active Presbyterian, and the rest showed no church affiliation at all.  
  
Sam sits back, frustrated. “I don’t get it,” he says. “They’re all different ages, have different jobs, different religions, come from different parts of the country… What am I missing?”  
  
“Perhaps it has nothing to do with the victims. Perhaps it’s coincidence.”  
  
“That’s the thing. As far as I can tell, Colin Murphy never even stepped inside the same grocery store as the others. One was visiting from out of town and had never been anyplace outside his friend’s house and the local Gas ‘n Sip. There’s no common place, no common activity…nothing.”  
  
Sam looks at his watch, just as his stomach rumbles. It’s four in the afternoon, and he has nothing to show for the day. Dean has been missing for almost twenty-four hours.  
  
They drive back to the motel in silence. Sam doesn’t want to listen to whatever mullet rock Dean has in the tape deck, and he left his iPod in the dock of his car back in San Diego. Castiel is a welcome presence next to him, but angels in general kind of suck at small talk. Dean’s running commentary used to drive Sam crazy, but it feels wrong to be in the Impala without it. The silence is too big to fill up with voices or music or talk radio.  
  
He needs food, and more coffee, but what he wants is sleep. He wants to close his eyes and wake up to find that this is a dream, and that Dean hasn’t disappeared, and that Sam’s still on the San Diego coast, listening to the waves as a body burns to ash below him.  
  
Better yet, he wants to wake and find that it’s five years ago, and he and Dean aren’t fractured yet. He wants to pretend that something could have gone differently, that there was a path to choose that didn’t lead them to this point.  
  
Not even Sam’s that delusional.  
  
He sighs and pushes the door open, and just then, something flares in his peripheral vision. He freezes, then moves his head carefully back the way it was. Something reflects off the mirror, like a coin in the sun. It’s half-hidden by one of the boulders on the outskirts of the parking lot, but Sam can see it all the time. There’s something metal there, reflecting in the afternoon light.  
  
It’s probably a soda can, or a penny, or a shard of glass. But his nerves are pinging, and he moves slowly, keeping his eyes on the patchy soil behind him.  
  
“Hold on,” he says to Castiel, and Castiel waits, head cocked.  
  
Sam treads carefully, gun drawn. He can see it now, lying at the base of the rock, black plastic and flat glass screen, gleaming in the sun’s rays.  
  
A burn phone, plastic and anonymous, shining like a beacon in the sunlight.  
  
He swallows, the bends down to pick it up. It’s hot to the touch, and it doesn’t turn on when Sam presses the power button.  
  
“What is it?” Castiel asks from directly behind him, and Sam jumps.  
  
“It’s, uh…” he clears his throat. “I think it’s Dean’s. He must have dropped it here. This must be where it…got him.”  
  
It takes Sam a while to find Dean’s charger in his duffel. The bag smells like Dean – dirty socks and all – and Sam has to zip it up once he’s done. He can’t let himself think of Dean when he has to save Dean. It makes panic rise up in him, and he can’t afford it; he needs a clear head.  
  
He sorts through Dean’s notes again while the phone is charging. His eyes keep returning to the sketch of the dog, and the strange word in the corner.  
  
“Ninety-seven,” Sam murmurs. Could be a year, or an address, or a….  
  
“Page number,” he says out loud. Castiel looks up.  
  
“Page ninety-seven. Cas, I need your help.”  
  
Sam’s barely made it to the second book before Castiel finds it. It’s in a book Sam recognizes from long nights browsing the library in Kansas. He’s been cautious about returning to the Men of Letters headquarters in the last five years, but he’s gone once or twice when he was stuck on a case. He guesses Dean must have as well. He’s not sure if he’s disappointed or relieved that they never ran into each other.  
  
“Here it is,” he says excitedly. There’s an outline of a dog, wild black fur and fierce, glowing eyes. It’s snout is tipped red what Sam guesses is blood, and underneath the sketch is an inscription.  
  
 _Cadw teulu ger_. Nothing else.  
  
Sam snaps his fingers. “Cas, can you recognize this? What language is this?”  
  
Castiel glances at it. “I’m hardly a language specialist, but I believe it’s Welsh. ‘Keep family near.’”  
  
Everything clicks into place, and Sam lets out a breath. “Family. I’m such an idiot.” He opens his laptop. A brief google search on each victim reveals what Sam knew the moment Castiel said the word  _family_.  
  
“Every one of them, alone. Dead parents, no siblings, no family to speak of. Rachel and Colin were orphaned young, but the rest of them lost their families to natural causes later in life. Cas, this thing is going after people without relatives. But then…” Sam shakes his head. “Why Dean? Dean has me.”  
  
Castiel’s blue gaze is very gentle. “Perhaps Dean didn’t realize that.”  
  
Shit. Pain shoots up Sam’s arm, and he realizes he’s clenched his fingers so hard around the book cover that his knuckles have turned white. He slowly, deliberately relaxes, joints aching. Dean had figured it out. It’s why he had called for Sam, and Sam had been nowhere to be found. Again.  
  
“Okay,” he breathes. “Okay. If we’re going to get him, we need to figure out what this is and how to kill it. I need to get to Lebanon and into the library. Can you bring us there?”  
  
Castiel’s hand is already moving toward Sam’s forehead. A touch and the world shifts around him.  
  


*

  
_Five Years Ago  
Warsaw, Missouri  
  
“Cleansing?” Dean asks. “What the hell does that mean?”  
  
“Look, I don’t know. I’m just letting you know what the tablet says. ‘For the final trial, a cleansing must be undertaken.’ It’s like confession, I think. There’s a ritual.”  
  
Kevin looks terrible, unshaven and exhausted. He blinks at them, dull-eyed and defiant. Sam would have pity, but he’s pretty sure he feels even worse. There’s a pit of apprehension in his stomach, and every breath is a marathon effort. Dean’s face is shuttered all the time now, angry and stone-faced when he looks at Sam, tired and worried when he looks away.  
  
Sam coughed for five minutes straight this morning and had to be helped to the bathroom. He’s having trouble staying upright in the flimsy kitchen chair, and if he stares at a fixed spot for too long, the world goes gray around him. He’s ready to end this, whatever the price may be.  
  
“What do we have to do?” he asks. His tongue feels too big for the words, too slow and clumsy.  
  
Kevin shoves a piece of paper into his hands, and Sam studies it. There’s a diagram – a circle filled with unfamiliar sigils, and an Enochian prayer underneath.  
  
“You make the symbol and sit in the middle of it. You say the prayer, and then…God cleanses you, I guess.”  
  
“Of what?”  
  
Kevin shrugs. “Whatever you need to be cleansed of.”  
  
“That’s a pretty long list,” Dean says, and Sam glares at him. Dean holds up his hands in surrender. “For both of us,” he amends.  
  
“Okay,” Sam says. “Tell us about the ritual.”_


	2. Part II

The Men of Letters bunker is the only permanent home Sam’s ever known; now he can barely stand to look at it. Upstairs, his room is as he left it five years ago. There are clothes in the closest and a pile of unread books by the foot of the bed. He hasn’t been able to bring himself to glance into Dean’s, but he suspects Dean hasn’t changed anything, either. Lingering optimism, Sam supposes. Like they might be able to make it a home again, if they just leave it as is.  
  
The library is daunting in its size, but Castiel manages to pull the books written in Welsh within ten minutes. It’s slow work. Sam can only flip through pictures; he has to trust that Castiel knows what he’s doing, but he’s never been good at turning Dean’s fate to someone else.  
  
It takes an hour, but Sam finds the sketch again in what he guesses is an encyclopedia of sorts. It’s the same wild fur, same bloody muzzle, same eerie orange eyes. The caption is identical -  _Cadw teulu ge_ r - and underneath is a brief entry.  
  
“The Barghest abducts its prey by a form of hypnosis,” Castiel translates from the heavy tome. “It has the power to call up memories of fear and loss in the victim, thereby paralyzing him. It then transports him to a feeding ground where it sustains itself off feelings of despair and loneliness. Victims are trapped in a loop of destructive memories until they are rescued, the Barghest is slain, or the victim dies of hunger, thirst, or exposure. Hunters, avoid eye contact with this beast for there is no defense against its persuasive powers. The Barghest can also move stone, and will use loose rocks as weapons.”  
  
Castiel looks up, and Sam manages a shaky smile. “This is good. It needs the victims alive. That means he’s not dead. We still have time.”  
  
“He may not be dead, but he’s been reliving his worst memories for nearly two days straight.”  
  
“It’s…it’s okay. Dean’s…” Lived at least three lifetimes worth of horror? Prone to death wishes on his best day? “Dean’s been through worse. We’ll make it in time.”  
  
Castiel doesn’t look convinced, and Sam drops his gaze. “What else?”  
  
“This creature hunts orphans for a reason. The only way to kill it is to catch it in a weakened state – that’s in direct sunlight – and to speak a ritual that involves mingling the blood of two family members. You and Dean will need to do it together.”  
  
“Blood,” Sam repeats. It slips out, like a memory, and Castiel looks at him.  
  
“It’s not surprising. Blood magic is some of the strongest magic there is.”  
  
Maybe there’s a reason Dad drilled it into them, Sam thinks. Something more than obsession. Maybe it was self-preservation.  
  
He clears his throat. “It says rescue. We can’t kill it if Dean is trapped in there - how do I get him out?”  
  
“There’s a second ritual to free a victim from the loop of memories. It also requires a blood relation.”  
  
Sam thinks of Colin Murphy, a boy without a single family member left in his life. If he can’t save Dean, he’ll be failing Colin as well.  
  
“Okay, so…let’s find it and kill it.”  
  
Castiel is shaking his head. “Sam, I looked everywhere for Dean. This creature has either taken Dean far out of range, or it has some way of warding against angels and demons. If we’re going to find Dean, we’ll have to use other means.”  
  
“Ruby taught me a spell once…”  
  
Castiel gives him a dark look that Sam patently ignores. “If Enochian rituals have failed to find Dean, then demon tricks will be useless as well. We need to find another way.”  
  


*

  
_5 Years Ago  
Lebanon, Kansas  
  
The Men of Letters headquarters rings emptily after the third trial. Sam drifts from room to room, and every time he stumbles on Dean, his brother has a drink in his hand. It takes Sam two weeks before he can stay awake for more than twelve hours straight, over a month before he gains enough weight back to fit into his old clothes. Dean is moody and withdrawn, and if Sam weren’t so tired, he’d be furious.  
  
Dean practices for hours in the shooting range. He could already hit a werewolf dead in the heart at fifty paces, so Sam’s not sure what improvements he’s trying to make. Sam hears the bang bang bang of Dean’s shotgun as he’s studying the text in front of him, and it lulls him into sleep.  
  
When he wakes, Dean’s shoulder is under his arm, holding him upright as he leads them both up to the bedrooms. Dean smells like whiskey and gunpowder, and he’s furnace-hot and marble-hard. Stoic and silent and long-suffering, and Sam hates him a little for it.  
  
Sam hazily tries to push away, and Dean’s grip tightens. “You’ll fall,” Dean warns grimly, and Sam thinks he’s probably right.  
  
Dean dumps him on his bed, and Sam rolls over, not wanting to see his brother’s face. It’s humiliating to be helped up the stairs like an invalid; it confirms every insult Dean’s ever hurled at him, and Sam can’t bear the resigned look Dean wears all the time now.  
  
“Breakfast in the morning?” Dean asks, shifting his weight in the doorway.  
  
“Let me sleep,” Sam mumbles into his pillow, and he registers Dean’s shoulders slumping.  
  
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Okay, Sammy.”  
  
Dean doesn’t leave. He hovers instead, and Sam feels a little sick at the thought that Dean might touch him. It’s been a month since the third trial, and they can barely look at each other. Kevin is gone, and Castiel is being staunchly evasive. Sam thinks there might be angels after them again, to punish them for their failure, but he can’t be sure. Dean has kept every detail from him except the ones Sam can remember in painful, bloody clarity.  
  
Sam’s figured most of it out anyway.  
  
There have been seventeen demonic possessions in the last month, as far as his laptop can tell. At least five deaths. Sam thinks about Meg, about Ruby, about Azazel and Lilith and the rancid things they’d done to their hosts. Sam’s not sure who thought giving the Winchesters power over life and death was a good idea. Whoever it was, they’re regretting it now.  
  
Dean finally moves, stepping back. Sam watches his shadow drift away from the crack under the door._   
  


*

  
Sam wakes in his bed and reaches for Dean. He comes up empty, and the last five years wash over him.  
  
He’s been back to Lebanon since he left Dean, but he’s never slept the night. He’s tried, but he’s always cleared out before morning, driven away by memories of his and Dean’s brief domesticity. It’s the only time Sam can remember that he was both hunting and happy, settled and content and not yearning for elusive safety.  
  
In his dreams, Dean was buried underground, and Sam couldn’t dig him out, no matter how deep he went. Even after he knew Dean had suffocated, he kept digging, looking for something he’d already lost.  
  
Lebanon makes him maudlin; Sam swings his feet onto the floor and shakes his head, wishing he could shake off the depression as easily.  
  
Castiel is in the library, staring at the bookshelves as though he can read them straight through their covers. For all Sam knows, he can.  
  
“Earthquakes,” Castiel says, and Sam blinks.  
  
“What?”  
  
“The Barghest can move rocks, according to the entry we found yesterday. If that’s true, then the disappearances must be connected to the earthquakes that preceded them.”  
  
“Coffee,” Sam says.  
  
It’s still the middle of the night; he slept for less than four hours. The lack of rest is catching up with him. He and Dean used to go for days, keeping each other awake with energy drinks and shoves and bad jokes. It’s been more difficult on his own, worse and worse the older he gets. He wonders if Dean has faced the same thing.  
  
He spent the grief-fueled weeks after Jess’s death chasing an invisible demon on nothing but anger and adrenaline. He can hardly remember that feeling. Instead, he remembers the slow, piecemeal way Dean pulled him out of it – replacing nightmares with memories of grateful victims they’d saved, dragging him out in public when he’d rather research, putting him to sleep with sex and pizza.  
  
The kitchen hasn’t been touched, except for one detail; Dean’s favorite coffee cup is in the sink. The mug proclaims “I <3 Zombies” with blood dripping from the chipped black letters. He’d seen it in the cupboard and immediately claimed it, cackling with glee.  
  
Dean probably left it without washing it the last time he was here. Dean’s gross like that. Sam gets the coffee going, cleans the cup, and waits.  
  
Castiel materializes in the middle of the room, and Sam jumps.  
  
“This is important,” he says bluntly. “More important than caffeine. Sam, I can sense geological patterns.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“And even if I can’t see where Dean is, I can tell you where the center of the most recent earthquake is located. If this creature is connected to it, that’s where we should look. We need to go back to North Carolina.”  
  
Sam’s stomach turns over. He tries not to let himself get too excited, but…. Close. They’re so close. “Okay,” he says shakily. “One minute. Let me just – ”  
  
“Now,” Castiel says, and touches two fingers to his forehead.  
  
The room shifts around him, and Sam lands on the worn motel carpeting, coffee mug still in hand.  
  
“Dammit,” he exclaims. “If the coffee maker burns the library down, you owe us some new books.”  
  
Castiel waves his hand. “I read all the books anyway – I can easily recreate them. Get what you need while I locate the epicenter. Then we’ll go.”  
  
 _Two days is nothing_ , Sam tells himself as he sorts through the assorted knives and shotguns. They’ve gone practically that long on a stakeout, nothing but coffee and talk radio keeping them awake. He picks carefully through the Impala’s trunk, taking Dean’s ivory-handled Colt, a recently-sharpened machete, and a vial of holy water just in case.  
  
He pushes his way back into the motel room, and that’s when he sees the light on Dean’s cell. It’s blinking green – fully charged. Sam carefully picks it up and looks at the screen.  
  
 _1 missed call_ , it tells him. One missed call labeled with Sam’s name, which means Dean has taken the time to punch Sam’s old number into a cell phone he’ll only be holding onto for a few months at most. Just like Sam has entered Dean’s number in every burn phone he’s had over the last five years. Just in case.  
  
It’s just a hang-up – Sam’s call from two days ago – but Sam leaves it anyway.  
  
He’s ready when Castiel returns.  
  
“Okay,” Sam says. “Let’s go.”  
  


*

  
_5 Years Ago  
I-77, West Virginia  
  
Sam answers the seventeenth time the phone rings.  
  
“Goddammit, Sam,” Dean is saying on the other line. “I swear to god….”  
  
“I’m not hurt. I’m not dead. No one abducted me,” Sam snarls. “So don’t follow me.”  
  
“Sam – ”  
  
Sam hangs up.  
  
The bus takes him to New Orleans, and he hitches to Texas from there. It’s twenty hours before he stops to rest, over a thousand miles before there’s enough distance between him and Dean. He heads from Texas to South Dakota before he realizes that the husk of Bobby’s house is probably the first place Dean will look. He takes Greyhound back toward Illinois instead and holes up in an abandoned building in the middle of Chicago. Dean hates the city.  
  
It isn’t until he’s been squatting for two days that he realizes he isn’t being pursued. There have been no more calls, no rumors Sam has picked up in the hunter bars and roadhouses. Dean isn’t chasing him, and Sam stops to breathe.  
  
Two months go by, and Dean doesn’t chase him.  
  
The symptoms from the trials fade away. He stops coughing blood; he stops feeling sluggish and sick all the time. The cuts on his skin heal to faint scars, and his body sets itself back to right. He’s not messing with apocalyptic forces anymore, and the damage done to him fades away with the sense of urgency.  
  
The acrid taste of failure remains.  
  
He doesn’t stop hunting. Try as he might, he can’t get back to the bubble of safety and peace he felt when Dean was in Purgatory. He keeps expecting to walk into a hotel room and see Dean there, to look up from his dinner to see Dean sliding into the booth across from him.  
  
It doesn’t happen, and his anger starts to congeal and grow cold.  
  
'It's good,' he tells himself. It's better without Dean's disappointment, Dean's failed expectations. Maybe this is the whole point. Independence. Strength. Dean stayed through Lucifer and Ruby, death and despair, hallucinations and betrayal and apocalypse. Maybe he should have left Sam a long time ago, though. Nevermind that he's alone now, like every other hunter on the fucking planet. Nevermind that he doesn't have anyone to walk through fire for anymore, and no one to go to walk through fire for him.  
  
Five years go by, and then Castiel is in a graveyard, asking for his help._   
  


*

  
Castiel lands them on the western face of the mountain’s peak. It’s windy, and Sam stumbles a little on the loose granite. He’s never had particularly good balance. Even the scraggly trees are coated in russet rock dust, fine and glittering. The sun is just starting to rise, and Sam has a sudden, fierce wish for Dean at his side. The stakes haven’t been this high in a long time.  
  
“There’s one story of a Barghest successfully being killed within the last two centuries,” Castiel is calmly saying. His voice is expressionless, but it sounds like a warning all the same. “Two brothers in England managed to successfully complete the ritual. Other than that, every hunter has failed. There are no accounts of a successful rescue.”  
  
“Great,” Sam says. The earliest accounts of the Barghest he managed to find date back to the medieval era. A creature that’s been around for thousands of years with so few legends can mean one of two things. The first choice is that it’s not a danger. Given the body count this one has racked up in the last few weeks, Sam doubts that’s the case.  
  
The second option is that there are few survivors to tell their story.  
  
Castiel moves three steps to his left, then reaches out and touches the abrupt granite rise. “It’s here. There have been no significant geological changes to this mountain for the last hundred years, except for this spot. This is where we should start.”  
  
The crack is almost hidden. The angle of the light turns it into a shadowy discoloration; Sam would have walked right by it if not for Castiel.  
  
The space is narrow, and Sam has to turn sideways to fit his shoulders through. The inside is damp and pitch black, and Sam clicks on his pocket flashlight. It illuminates a bare, twisting path ahead of them, made of jagged walls and uneven ground.  
  
“Rocks,” Sam says softly. “It cleared itself a cave. We’re on the right track.”  
  
The stone walls keep in the chill, and Sam shivers as they make their way cautiously forward.  
  
“I can feel it,” Castiel says in wonder. “This place is cloaked, somehow. I’d never have been able to find it, and neither would a demon or ghost. It takes human vision, human eyes.”  
  
“That’s why there’s so little lore about this thing,” Sam replies in a hushed voice. “It takes people no one bothers to find, to a place totally off the map. Who knows how many other places it’s attacked?”  
  
The cold intensifies as they head further into the heart of the earth. At first Sam thinks it’s just the absence of sun, but soon he begins to shiver. It’s hell-cold, evil-cold, unnatural and heavy.  
  
The narrow path opens into a low-hung cave that forces Sam to stoop over. The smell of death and sickness hits him like a brick wall, and he retches into his shirt collar. Even Castiel looks troubled. Sam swings the flashlight around the circular interior of the cave and comes to a stop.  
  
There are bodies lining the wall, a live timeline of the abductions. The first victim is directly in front of Sam, the next to his left, and so-on. Every one is linked to the wall by a thin gold chain, right hand limply raised in a ghastly wave. There are older victims in various stages of rot and decay, including at least one skeleton crumbling to nothing. There are no flies in the damp cave, but Sam can see maggots writhing, glowing white in the darkness.  
  
He pushes back his nausea and finishes the sweep of the cave. Off to his right, next to Rachel Johnson’s slack face and Colin’s Murphy’s slumped red head, is Dean.  
  
Sam’s feet move without his permission, eyes trained on Dean. He forces down the urge to call out and crouches down instead. Dean is thinner than Sam remembers, whittled and lean. His skin is waxy, the jut of his cheekbones startling. His eyes are closed, and he’s not moving. The sides of his neck are dotted with purple bruises. Teeth marks.  
  
Sam puts a hand on his face, patting. There’s panic riding him, but he forces it back under his skin.  
  
“Dean,” he says thickly. “Come on, wake up.”  
  
He slides two fingers along the side of Dean’s neck until he finds it: Dean’s pulse thumping sluggish and faint. He’s not sure if he wants to cry or be sick.  
  
“It’s okay,” he manages, more to himself than to Castiel. “He’s alive. He’s gonna be fine.”  
  
He feels Castiel looming behind him. “Is he… Can you tell what he’s seeing? I mean, what he’s reliving?”  
  
Castiel lays a hand against Dean’s forehead, brows pulled together. After a moment he drops his hand.  
  
“Hell,” he says quietly. “Your death. Your parents’.”  
  
“The greatest hits,” Sam says shakily. “Let’s get him out of here.”  
  
The chain gleams unnaturally bright in the dark cavern. Sam tugs on it, but it doesn’t budge. There was nothing in any of the books about a chain. It’s warm to the touch – more living thing than soulless metal. He runs light fingers around the circumference, but there’s no keyhole to insert a lock pick.  
  
“I can’t break it,” he says desperately.  
  
Castiel closes a fist around the chain and yanks. Sam has seen Castiel crumble entire buildings with the flick of his head; the flimsy-looking chain doesn’t even bend.  
  
Sam feels his lip curl into a snarl without his permission. He shoulders Castiel out of the way and pulls harder, both hands around the chain and one foot pressed against the damp wall for leverage. The skin on his palms begins to scrape away, and his shoulder joints pulse with pain.  
  
Dean’s whole body jostles loosely, quiet and limp and too close to dead for Sam’s mental stability.  
  
“Fuck,” he swears, no longer keeping his voice down. He slams his foot against the links angrily, like that might work where Castiel’s celestial strength failed.  
  
“Sam,” Castiel says, alarm in his hushed voice.  
  
“I know,” Sam says, breathing hard.  
  
“No.” Castiel touches his shoulder, and Sam looks.  
  
In the shadows, two eyes blink slowly open. They glow orange, both alike and radically more terrifying than the illustrations in the books. They pull his gaze in, hypnotic and silent. Under his feet, he can feel the ground vibrating. The dog is growling.  
  
“You have to do it now,” Castiel says urgently. “If it gets you, too, there won’t be anything I can do to help.”  
  
Sam feels himself swaying a little, paralyzed by the unblinking eyes following him. A black shape seems to detach itself from the wall. In the deep darkness, he can make out the points of its hackles, bristling silently.  _Dogs. It’s always dogs_ , he thinks distantly. In his mind, he can see Dean’s skin tearing under the pressure of hellhound fangs, the useless way he’d put his hands up to stop the attack.  
  
It will happen again, Sam knows. If he moves, they’ll both be ripped to shreds, he’s sure of it. He shifts minutely in front of Dean, and one massive paw slides forward. Sam watches it. His mind is tumbling backwards in time – Dean’s chest split like a piñata, the blood fountaining, the way Sam’s wrists had pressed heavily against the wall, the raw ache of his throat from the screams…  
  
“Sam!” Castiel catches him as his knees start to bend. Sam gets a bone-rattling shake, and he tears his eyes away from the creature in the corner.  
  
“Dean,” Castiel says. “The ritual. Do it now. I’ll shield you.”  
  
Shit. Sam shakes his head, sharp points of fear still rattling him like nails in a jar. “There’s not enough time. We have to get him away, or…”  
  
“We no longer have a choice,” Castiel says, voice very low, “Do it now, or neither of you is leaving this mountain.”  
  
Sam swallows. The shock of fear is still thrumming through him. He turns his face away with effort and sinks down again in front of Dean. He feels Castiel at his back, carefully placed between him and the Barghest. The rumbling growl starts to build in volume.  
  
He uses his pocket knife to slice cleanly across his forearm. Blood blooms red in the glow of the chain. He makes an identical incision across Dean’s bound arm. The cut is too slow to well up, too dark. It makes him think of the blood crawling sluggishly through Dean’s veins, the labored pump of his heart. He shudders and presses the cuts together. Slowly and clearly, he speaks the ritual.  
  
It takes a minute for it to work. Dean doesn’t so much as twitch, and Sam feels his heart stutter to a halt. He fucked it up, he said it wrong, or Dean is already too far gone…  
  
Their arms slam together like magnets, and Dean makes a sound like a grunt, short and pained. Sam’s whole arm is tingling numbly, and he links his fingers through Dean’s to ground him.  
  
“Hey.” Sam touches Dean’s face with his free hand. “Wake up. Come on, you’re okay.”  
  
Dean is shifting now, and Sam feels the power of the spell rushing through him as well.  _Blood magic is some of the strongest magic there is_ , Castiel had said, and Sam feels it now. It’s so stupid, and so simple, what a little blood can do.  
  
It’s working, and the rest of the words come with amazing ease. “It’s okay,” he says. “I’ve got you, you’re fine. Come back to me, man.”  
  
Dean’s throat rolls in a swallow, and the chain around Dean’s wrist falls to dust. They’re left pressing skin to skin, nothing in between them. Dean opens his eyes.  
  
“Sam,” he says. It’s not a question. His voice is ruined and cracked, but Sam can understand him just fine.  
  
“Yeah,” Sam says. He smiles. He can’t help it. “Hey.”  
  
Dean’s eyes close again. “About fucking time,” he mumbles.  
  
Sam presses his forehead against Dean’s for a shaky moment. Dean’s probably too out-of-it to remember, and even if he does – Sam will take the mocking if that’s the price.  
  
“Sam,” Castiel says, measured and wary.  
  
“It’s okay. It worked.”  
  
“Then we need to go.”  
  
Sam casts a look over at Rachel and Colin, still and helpless against the wall. He looks at Castiel, and Castiel shakes his head minutely. “You can’t save them. Not now.”  
  
Sam hefts Dean up with an arm around his back. Around the outline of Castiel’s coat, he can see the Barghest, head lowered and hackles raised. The cave wavers with its power.  
  
Castiel’s hand lands on his shoulder, and the darkness disappears around them.  
  


*

  
_5 Years Ago  
Lebanon, Kansas  
  
“I don’t like this,” Dean says.  
  
“You’ve mentioned.”  
  
He finishes the sigil, painstakingly filling in the gaps with wax crayon. Sit in the middle and confess his sins. Easy. If he can even remember all his sins. It’s a pretty long list.  
  
“We don’t know what’s gonna happen,” Dean tries again. “At least with other two we knew the risk. We could prepare, we could strategize….”  
  
“That’s the point,” Sam says. “God, angels, faith, ringing any bells?”  
  
“What the fuck has faith ever gotten us?” Dean asks, frowning.  
  
Everything, Sam thinks privately. But there’s no arguing with Dean when he’s like this. He’s standing outside the sigil, feet planted belligerently. His eyes are scared, though, and Sam knows that if he shows any hesitation at all, Dean will take them both out of here, find some excuse to postpone or avoid or call the whole thing off.  
  
“Look,” Sam says. “Whatever happens, you can’t step foot inside this circle. You get that, right?”  
  
“Says who?”  
  
“It’s…implied. This is a solo mission, dude. I know you want to help, but you’ve got to trust me. I’ll be okay.”  
  
“You’re not okay!” Dean explodes. “You look like death warmed over, you barely eat, you can’t fight, and I can hear you coughing two floors up.”  
  
“This will make it better,” Sam says. He wishes he felt as sure as he sounded. “This is what it’s all been for. Think – no demons. No hellhounds. No Crowley. Kevin can go home. Krissy can stop hunting. We can throw the demon-killing knife away and never use it again. Can you imagine writing that in Dad’s journal? We have to try this, or…”  
  
Everything else is pointless, Sam thinks. What good are they, if they can’t put themselves on the line for this?  
  
“Promise me,” he says. “Whatever happens, you stay outside that circle.”  
  
“Sam – ”  
  
“If you’ve ever promised me anything, Dean. You’ve got to believe me. I can do this.”  
  
Dean drops his hands to his sides and closes his eyes. “I promise.”_


	3. Part III

Dean sleeps for twelve hours straight. Sam dozes in the other bed while Castiel comes and goes. Sam wakes once to see him leaning over Dean, a hand on Dean’s temple.  
  
“What are you doing?” he mumbles.  
  
“Healing,” is Castiel’s succinct reply. “His cells have been damaged from days without food or water. I’m repairing them.”  
  
Sam isn’t proud of the jealousy that works its way into his chest, sharp and insidious. It calls up reminders of Castiel’s handprint seared into Dean’s arm, branding him. Castiel can save Dean in ways that Sam can’t, and it feels like another failure, one more wedge between them.  
  
“Thanks,” he says, and feels like an asshole.  
  
He spends most of his time watching Dean, cataloging the changes. There are glints of gray at Dean’s temples, deeper lines bracketing his mouth. He looks whittled and lean, dangerous and fragile as the tip of a dagger. Sam supposes he’s always been that way, but after five years it’s like discovering him all over again. He sleeps, face slack and pale against the pillow, Sam chanting  _wake up_ ,  _wake up_  in his brain. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say, doesn’t know what might be hurled his way, but he knows it’s not really Dean until he’s opened his eyes and said Sam’s name again.  
  
Once, after they’d failed the trials, Sam lost himself carving up a demon. It had said something – some tired taunt, some snarky comment on their ineptitude – and the twist of Ruby’s knife in its heart hadn’t been enough. He’d kept going, gutted it until he was tangled in entrails, slipping in the blood on his hands and feet. He’d kept cutting long after the light had gone out from its eyes, and he’d only come back to himself when he’d heard Dean shouting his name, hands tight on Sam’s face.  
  
He’d looked up, and Dean had been panicked, splattered with blood that wasn’t his own, shaking and wide-eyed. And Sam had been empty and sick and short of breath but devoid of the fear that should have been there. He wouldn’t have cared if the demon had clawed out his heart, and he remembers thinking it was Dean’s fault that he’d come to that.  
  
“The girl was dead anyway,” Dean had said later. “It’s…you didn’t kill anything that didn’t deserve to die, Sam.”  
  
Sam hadn’t been so sure. But if the confession of all his sins, all his guilt in all its enormity hadn’t been enough to save the world, what was one more death, really?  
  
Dean wakes up at dusk. Sam is propped against the headboard with his laptop, and Dean rolls over and moans, “Fuck.”  
  
Sam fights the urge to hover like a mother hen and stays where he is on the bed. “Hey.”  
  
“What the hell is wrong with my head?”  
  
“Probably dehydration. Cas says he healed most of the damage, but you’re gonna feel like you spent the night at a frat party for a while.”  
  
Sam goes to the bathroom and gets him a glass of water and a couple painkillers. When he comes back, Dean has buried himself under the covers and is groaning intermittently.  
  
“Dude.” Sam nudges him, and a hand snakes out for the pills and water. They disappear back under the covers, and Sam sighs.  
  
“You want to sleep some more?”  
  
“Screw sleep. I want eggs and bacon,” comes the muffled reply.  
  
“You get an energy bar,” Sam says. “If you manage that, we’ll see.”  
  
“Fuck you, Florence Nightingale.”  
  
“Yeah, well. You’ll thank me later.”  
  
Dean flips the covers back so Sam can see him, finally. “Did Cas find you?”  
  
“Showed up in a cemetery in San Diego. I almost shot him by accident.”  
  
Dean’s eyes slide away. “Sorry ‘bout that.”  
  
It’s too soon to call Dean the idiot that he is, so Sam just shakes his head and says, “I’m glad he did.”  
  
Dean shoves two energy bars in his mouth, then spends the next half hour throwing them back up in the bathroom. By the time Castiel returns, he’s managed to clean up and change, only to sink exhaustedly into a chair.  
  
Sam can’t stop looking at him, at the lines of his shoulders and the familiar curve of his mouth and his sharp green eyes.  
  
“What do you remember?” Sam asks.  
  
“Goddamn mutt got me in the parking lot.” He rubs a frustrated hand over his forehead. “I had two guns and a machete on me, but the eyes on that thing… It’s like I was paralyzed.”  
  
Sam swallows, remembering. “It’s not your fault. It messes with your brain. Once you lock eyes with it, you’re done.”  
  
“A new kind of monster. Awesome.”  
  
“A really old kind, actually.” Sam tosses him the notebook with the specs on the Barghest. While he’s poring over the information, Sam takes a deep breath and braces himself.  
  
“Dean…we didn’t just find you. We found all the missing victims. Most were dead, but a couple were still alive when I left.” Dean’s head shoots up.  
  
“You  _Ieft_  someone there? Jesus Christ, Sam.” He’s on his feet before Sam can respond, tossing the notebook aside, up and moving toward his duffel.  
  
Sam clenches his jaw, stung. “If you’d wait long enough to let me finish…”  
  
“We’re wasting time,” Dean says impatiently. “We have to – ”  
  
“Dean,” Castiel says calmly, and Dean stops.  
  
It shouldn’t still hurt so much. Sam’s seen heaven, hell, and everything in between; Dean’s disapproval shouldn’t have the power to reduce him to a sulky teenager, but it does. Sam can feel the old shame settling on him like a cloak.  
  
“I didn’t have a choice,” he says, deliberately calm. “The only way to save those people is to kill the Barghest, and I needed you to do that.”  
  
“Then let’s – ”  
  
“Sunlight, Dean. It only works in direct sunlight.” Sam hurls the notebook back at Dean with more force than necessary. It hits Dean in the chest, and Dean catches it, wary surprise on his face.  
  
“Finish reading,” Sam bites out. “I’ll be back.” He grabs Castiel by the elbow and starts pulling him toward the door.  
  
“Don’t think I don’t know you’re talking about me,” Dean calls after them, and Sam slams the door hard enough to rattle the frame. Less than an hour, and Sam’s not sure if he wants to strangle Dean or press him back against the bed frame and kiss him until they both drown.  
  
Castiel is staring at him, concern in his ageless face. “If you’d rather I stay…”  
  
Sam is tempted, if only so he’ll have someone else for Dean to harangue. But the truth is that if he and Dean are going to hunt together in the morning, there are things that need to be said. Truces that need to be called.  
  
“No…thanks, man. Sun should be up around six. We’ll be ready to go. Is there anything I can feed him that he won’t throw back up?”  
  
Castiel smiles briefly. “Your brother is ordering takeout at the moment. I’m guessing that’s what you’ll both be eating.”  
  
Sam looks the way he came, and sure enough he can see Dean through the window, on his cell and reading off the laptop screen. If he forgets the crab rangoons, Sam is going to kill him.  
  
The air stirs, and when Sam looks back Castiel is gone.  
  
Dean is propped against his bed's headboard when Sam steps back inside, clicking idly through the channels. The notebook is still on his lap, Sam’s messy, looping handwriting and Dean’s blocky letters crawling all over the page.  
  
“Dean…”  
  
“I ordered Chinese, and before you ask, yes I remembered your gross little crab thingies.”  
  
“Dean – ”  
  
“Twenty-minute delivery. Said he’d ring from the main desk when it got here.”  
  
“Dean, we have to talk.”  
  
“Yeah, that sounds fun and all, but I think I’ll pass.” Dean stretches idly, and a pale  strip of skin catches Sam’s attention where his shirt has ridden up. Sam takes care not to look too long.  
  
“It's been five years. You don’t think we should talk before we try and take down an ancient dog monster?”  
  
Dean shrugs. “Blood, Welsh, sun. I read the files. Nothing to it.”  
  
Sam tries to keep hold of his tenuous patience. “Nothing? What about new injuries you’ve gotten in the last five years? New techniques? Anything that might get us killed? Unless there’s something else you want to talk about.”  
  
Sam knows he’s baiting; he knows it, and he hates it, and he can’t stop himself anyway. Fuck Dean and his avoidance and his macho bullshit.  
  
“You know what?” Dean’s mouth twists sourly. “I changed my mind about the food.” He swipes his keys from the bedside table. “I just got un-comatose – I’ll be celebrating at the roadhouse down the street. Thanks for the rescue, don’t forget to put my leftovers in the fridge.” He lifts his jacket off the back of the chair and heads for the door.  
  
Sam thinks about blocking his way, but he has a feeling that putting his hands on Dean would be a bad idea right about now. The room is snapping with tension, and touching Dean is a sure way to bring everything down around them. Sam's heart is pounding, and at least half of it is painful relief that Dean is still alive to get pissed at.  
  
He fights for a neutral tone. “In seven hours, we have to hunt together. This thing is no joke – there are no records of it, because almost everyone who goes to fight it ends up dead. We can’t afford to go in there unless we’re ready.”  
  
“First of all, I was born ready. Second of all, we’ve both been hunting – it’s not like we’re rusty. The basics don’t change, Sam. We can shoot, we can aim a knife, we can ritualize like a boss. We’re ready.” Dean raises his eyebrows - in challenge or exasperation - and Sam runs a frustrated hand through his hair.  
  
Dean's stopped moving, but he’s side-eyeing the door, and Sam doesn’t want him to go. He doesn’t want to hunt with Dean when everything is so unsettled, and he doesn’t want to end up in another vicious fight, but most of all he doesn’t want to eat crappy takeout by himself in a motel room while Dean is a mile away getting shitfaced and brooding.  
  
He can’t think of anything else to say, and so he gives up. “Okay,” he says, wishing he didn’t sound so lost. “If that’s all you have to say, then okay.”  
  
Dean freezes, and for a second, Sam’s not sure which way he’ll go. Then he sighs and hangs his head. “Shit. Fine, talk.”  
  
“I just…” The words stick in Sam’s throat. He can’t say what he wants. He can remember Dean five years ago, the defiant guilt on his face, the way he’d arched and moaned under Sam even when they'd hated each other. The tight, desperate way he’d grabbed onto Sam’s face, during the trials and after. Sam can’t say  _how could you_  and  _where have you been_  and  _I didn’t mean to leave_ , so he says:  
  
“I know I’m probably the last person you want to work with right now, and I just wanted to let you know…I’ll be gone once this is over. I just came to finish the job.”  
  
Dean barely moves, but Sam sees his jaw tick once. He doesn’t know if it means  _thanks_  or  _good_  or  _fuck you_.  
  
“Great,” Dean says bitterly. “Talk over?”  
  
“No. I also need you to know that I haven’t changed my mind. About what I did five years ago. And what you did.”  
  
“You know, all of this could have fit in a text message.”  
  
“Jesus, Dean. I’m trying to get something out, here. Could you stop being an asshole for five seconds?”  
  
“Let me get this straight. Five years ago, you said ‘Don’t follow me.’ And I didn’t. Now you’re saying nothing’s changed. So why the fuck are you here, Sam?” His eyes are brimming with anger and hurt, and this isn’t the way Sam meant for this conversation to go.  
  
“I’m just trying to say....” He swallows. No way around it. “I was scared when I couldn’t find you. When Cas couldn’t find you. And I’m still pissed, and I know you are, too. But I’m…just happy you’re okay, okay? Because if I had been too late…”  
  
He stops. If he goes any further he might be apologizing, and that’s the one thing he swore he’d never do. But he can still feel the way fear and despair wrapped around him in those few seconds before he felt Dean’s heart beating. He thinks, when Dean dies for good, he’ll probably rip the thing responsible limb from limb, be it demon, monster, or human. He’s John Winchester’s legacy after all, no matter how hard he’s tried to break free.  
  
Dean’s face has softened the slightest bit. “We haven’t exactly been partners in a while. You were in time, Sam. But even if you hadn't made it... Wouldn't have changed anything. You’ve been fine without me.”  
  
“Don’t you say that. You don’t know – ”  
  
Dean’s cell rings, and Dean smiles a little. A real one. “Food,” he says. Sam gears up to protest, but Dean holds up a halting hand. “Don’t blow your top,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”  
  
The air goes out of the room the moment the door slams behind Dean.  
  
Sam sinks shakily onto the bed. He didn’t manage to say anything – not really. But he feels better anyway, light in a way that has nothing to do with blood or guilt or sin. He thinks it probably has something to do with the simple fact of Dean, coming back with food and warmth, the only constant Sam’s ever had.  
  
Then his eyes drift toward the muted television, and all thoughts of food fly from his brain.  
  
Dean's back a minute later, balancing a brown bag of food and a two-liter bottle of soda. He’s humming slightly, but he freezes when he sees Sam’s face.  
  
Sam hitches his head toward the reporter on TV.  
  
“Eleven ‘o clock news,” he says grimly. “Another kid’s gone missing.”  
  


*

  
_5 years ago_  
 _Lebanon, Kansas_  
  
 _Dean swallows. “Confess something.”_  
  
 _Sam takes a deep breath. Might as well begin at the beginning. “Jess,” he says._  
  
 _Pain slashes across his forearm, deep and white-hot. He hisses and makes a fist, forcing blood out of the wound. His shirt is ripped over the cut, fabric hanging like loose skin._  
  
 _On the outskirts of the sigil, Dean’s fists are balled at his sides. Sam forces a tight smile to his face, despite the throbbing pain in his arm. “I guess it’s working.”_  
  
 _“You okay?”_  
  
 _“I’m good.”_  
  
 _“I don’t like this.”_  
  
 _“You’ve mentioned.” He takes another deep breath and braces himself. He thinks of his father, on the floor in agony, Sam’s shotgun a foot from his face. “Dad.”_  
  
 _The cut opens on his thigh this time, jeans ripping like tissue paper. Blood darkens the edges._  
  
 _Dean is cursing in a low, steady stream._  
  
 _“I’m good, I’m okay,” Sam says, but he feels a little faint. It’s not like he’s unused to the sight of his own blood, but the helplessness of watching it pool on the floor around him makes his fingers twitch._  
  
 _Cleansing, Sam tells himself. These are your sins, this is what you’ve done._  
  
 _“Mom.”_  
  
 _A shallow slice down the side of his cheek, warm wetness running down in rivulets._  
  
 _“Fuck,” Dean explodes. “Why don’t you confess to the Lindbergh baby next? You had about as much to do with that as you did with Mom’s death. You were six months old!”_  
  
 _Sam clenches his jaw, trying to think through the throbbing pain. “Doesn’t matter.”_  
  
 _“So…what? No matter what you say in there, you get sliced up? That’s bullshit. I’m stopping this.” He takes a determined step forward, and Sam holds up a hand to still him._  
  
 _“Wait.” He racks his brain. “JFK’s assassination.”_  
  
 _Nothing._  
  
 _Dean’s jaw is still taut, but Sam raises his eyebrows. “See? This is about me, Dean. If I feel guilt for it, I get cleansed. That’s all that matters.”_  
  
 _Dean shakes his head angrily, but he stays outside the circle, shoulders tense._  
  
 _Sam thinks of the smell of leather and ash, of a blue trucker’s cap shimmering and blinking out of sight._  
  
 _“Bobby,” he says._  
  
 _A slash into the meat of his shoulder, and Sam grabs at the burning pain without thinking. His fingers come away shiny and red. There are four places pulsing on his skin now, four touchstones of guilt and loss. His whole family outside of Dean, branded permanently into him now._  
  
 _Amelia’s name opens a cut across his heart, Ellen’s slices open his palm. Jo, Ash, and Pamela burn pain into his arms. Madison. Benny. Rufus. He stops trying to predict where the next attack will come from. Every confession brings a new cut, until he can’t pinpoint the wounds anymore. His whole body is burning up. He’s never cataloged his dead before. That’s always been Dean’s burden, and now Sam can almost understand the self-loathing Dean carries around like armor. The bleak stretch of names is worse than the cuts laying him open._  
  
 _His eyes are stinging with blood and sweat, and he can feel Dean’s desperate gaze on him, even if he refuses to look._  
  
 _“Ruby,” he manages, and he’s unprepared for way the attack flays his back open. He gasps and twists onto his side, writhing. There’s blood coating the floor now, and his hands slip in it as he tries to lever himself back into a sitting position. His ears are ringing, but through it all, he can hear Dean’s voice._  
  
 _“Sam! Look at me, goddammit.”_  
  
 _Sam opens his eyes and manages to stretch out a hand again._ Stay _. Dean’s face is a thundercloud of rage and helplessness, but he stays. Sam’s starting to shiver, and his arms feel very heavy._  
  
 _There are more names – victims he never managed to save, good people sacrificed in the war. Martin, Cindy, Steve Wandell, Meg Masters. Jake, gunned down for revenge. Ava, twisted by power because Sam couldn’t get to her in time. Andy. Max. Lenore. People he can’t put a name to, but whose deaths he can describe with intimate detail. His fault, and maybe it’s the pain, but his blood feels cleaner already. Maybe he really is being forgiven._  
  
 _Dean is on his hands and knees, eyes locked on Sam. Sam’s not sure when it happened, but he’s somehow on the floor, slumped on his side. His limbs are trembling. He’s clean enough now; he can say it._  
  
 _“Purgatory,” he rasps, and it draws a long slice down his exposed side. He barely even feels it.  Dean jerks back, startled._  
  
 _“I’m sorry I left you there,” he mumbles._  
  
 _“Jesus,” Dean breathes. “Enough, Sammy.”_  
  
 _“Hell. I couldn’t get you out.” Another cut, sideways across his thigh, he thinks._  
  
 _“Heaven. It made you feel like shit, and I didn’t mean…” His lips are numb, and the rest of the words get lost in the space between his breath and the floor. He feels weighted down, pinned to the rough boards by the bulk of his own body, cut open to Dean’s eyes. The tips of his fingers are very cold._  
  
 _“Stanford,” he whispers, and he thinks Dean gets it, though. Not sorry for escaping – never that. But sorry for leaving. For all the things he’s chosen over family, for all the times he’s strayed. He can’t bring himself to regret it, but he can do this – confess, cleanse, atone._  
  
 _There’s more, but he can’t make his mouth work. His blood is drying to a crust around him, the dampness of his clothes making him shiver. His eyes won’t focus, and be blinks slowly. He doesn’t know if this is enough, if this is what God wants, but he doesn’t have anything left to give._  
  
 _Dean’s low voice is a buzz in the back of his head, the words immaterial. Dean’s heard the worst now, and he’s still here._  
  
 _He wants to ask if it worked. He needs to get up, to say the ritual and finish this, but he’s too cold to move. Dean’s saying his name over and over, and Sam turns his head away. He’s not about to fail at this while Dean is watching. He just needs a few minutes to rest, to close his eyes and get warm and get his strength back._  
  
 _The room fades in and out. The ceiling is turning in slow circles above him, swooping like the panels of a fan. The pain is fading to numbness, and it’s a slow seeping relief. Hands are under his shoulders, lifting him up._  
  
 _“I can’t, I’m sorry. Sam…damn it, don’t you die on me.” Dean’s talking again. There’s something wrong about what’s happening, but Sam can’t figure it out right now. His world spins, and Dean’s terrified face is the last thing he sees._  
  


*

  
Joanie Miller is three years old, blond and blue-eyed and pig-tailed. Her mother died five months ago in an armed burglary, and she’s been a ward of the state ever since. She’d been in town visiting the St. Agnes when she was taken. The news says she disappeared from the church's parking lot, there one second and gone the next.  
  
“To replace me,” Dean says in a very low voice. “Shit. I guess it ran out of chow.”  
  
“It’s not your fault. We were going in anyway,” Sam tells him. He tries to believe it. “Now it’s just…one more person to save.” He feels a little sick at the idea of a toddler chained in that cave. What kind of bad memories could a toddler possibly have? In three years of living, how many nightmares could she really have accumulated?  
  
“We can’t screw this up,” Dean says viciously.  
  
“We won’t.”  
  
The food is long gone. The clock on the wall is edging toward two in the morning, which means Cas will be there in four hours. Sam thinks he’s too wound up to sleep, but there’s nothing left to do except wait for daylight. Sam reads and re-reads the ritual, tries to memorize it and all its contingencies, all its possible disasters.  
  
If he or Dean gets caught they’ll have to start all over again. Assuming the other one makes it out alive. The photo Sam stole from St. Agnes burns a hole in his pocket. Rachel and Colin are probably dead by now, but Joanie…Joanie could be saved. And no matter what, they have to kill the Barghest so it can’t take anyone else.  
  
Dean still looks pale, but his hands are steady and his eyes clear as he flicks mindlessly from one channel to another.  
  
“Quit staring,” Dean says without looking. “I’m not gonna fall apart.”  
  
“I wasn’t staring,” Sam lies, and Dean snorts. “You were puking your guts out this morning. I just want to make sure – ”  
  
“I’m fine.”  
  
Sam takes a long breath. “Okay.” He rises from his chair, cracking the cramped joints in his shoulders. “Four hours left. I’m gonna try and – ”  
  
“Sam.” He turns his head, and Dean is looking at him, the television a low buzz in the background.  
  
“Thanks. I mean it. That would've been it for me if you hadn’t shown up.”  
  
He nods, opens his mouth to say he would come again if Dean would just let him, would trust him, would stop being so stubbornly overbearing every second of every…  
  
“But I need you to go when this is done,” Dean continues. “And not to come back.”  
  
There’s silence in the room as all of Sam’s tumbling thoughts come to a slow stop.  
  
“What?”  
  
“You need to stay away. I just barely got used to having you gone and now…” Dean’s lips turn up in a ghost of a smile. “I need you to be okay. And  _I_  need to be okay. And that can’t happen when we’re around each other.”  
  
His brain, shocked into silence, flares back into roaring, angry life. Dean would have died if Sam hadn’t come. Dean could die  _any day_ , and Sam could stop it just by being here, by stopping Dean from drinking when he shouldn’t and using a gun to solve a problem when he should be using words and making him  _want to live_. Sam stayed away, only came when Dean called. Who the  _fuck is Dean_  to tell him…  
  
And then he stops again, because Dean is looking somewhere past him, face tight and pained. And he knows that Dean hasn’t been okay, just like Sam hasn’t been okay. Dean has never healed from all the times Sam has left, and he never will. And Sam’s beginning to realize he doesn't want him to. If Sam has to be empty and useless on his own, raw and aimless and half-alive, then Dean does too. It's fucking fair, is what it is. Tit for tat, and Dean somehow hasn't realized it yet.  
  
Dean's always been a little slow.  
  
“Okay,” he says, and Dean blinks.  
  
“Okay? That’s it?”  
  
“That’s it.” He sits on the edge of Dean’s bed and watches Dean’s shoulders pull together. He could keep arguing, but the sad truth is that they could both die in a few hours and the point will be moot anyway.  
  
“You know, I saw you once,” Sam says abruptly.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“At a crime scene. About a year after I left. I looked up and you were there. It was just a coincidence but…”  
  
“It wasn’t a coincidence,” Dean interrupts. “I knew you were there, and I went.” He shakes his head, jaw jutting subbornly. “And you know what? I saw you, too. I saw your back booking it in the other direction.”  
  
Sam doesn’t know how to explain it, can’t quite describe the way the ground had gone out from under him at the sight of Dean’s face back then. Relief and loneliness and the sudden, dangerous inclination to apologize, to say something that would bring them both crashing back into each other.  
  
He’d run the other way.  
  
He looks at Dean now, the familiar clear green of his eyes. He touched Dean in the cave, and he hasn’t touched him since. He’s watched, fingers itching, as Dean slept and breathed and swore and frowned. He’s been waiting for Dean’s permission, but he knows now that he’s not going to get it.  
  
“You gonna sleep?” Dean asks without breaking his gaze.  
  
Instead of answering, Sam hooks a hand around Dean’s neck and pulls him forward. Dean lets himself be pulled, coming easily if warily. Sam takes his time with the kiss, remembering. Dean’s lips are warm and honey-sweet, and Sam finds himself pressing in deeper and harder, searching for that one spot where he’ll be able to get  _all_  of Dean, hold him still and take and take and take until they’re both gasping.  
  
It’s useless; Dean is frustratingly mobile under his lips, and Sam doesn’t have the patience anyway. He comes up for air, and then Dean’s lips are on his face, dragging over his cheek, his temple, his eyelids. Sam settles between Dean’s spread legs, feeling Dean hard as a rock against his thigh.  
  
“This is a ‘we’re both gonna die’ fuck, isn’t it?” he hears Dean murmur. Sam thinks he should have some retort for that, but he’s too dazed by Dean’s hands instead, sliding up into his hair. Then Dean is kissing him again, and Sam is reaching for his own fly.  
  
Dean pushes him face down on the bed like he used to when they were teenagers, before Sam got bigger and more impatient and started yearning for  _elsewhere_. Sam can’t quite remember why they ever stopped. The roll of Dean’s hips against him is steady and sure, his breath hot and damp on the back of Sam’s neck. It’s been a long time, and it’s not an easy fit, but the discomfort somehow becomes mixed up in the pleasure, spiking it higher.  
  
Sam’s had plenty of girls, even outside of Jess and Amelia, but Dean’s the only one who’s ever had him like this, face down and spread open. He can’t be sure, but he likes to think he’s the only one for Dean, too. Who else would take them and all their dysfunction?  
  
Sam curls his arms around the pillow to keep himself from reaching back and touching. He knows, somewhere in his sex-soaked brain, that it can’t always be this easy. He forgets, though, when Dean is inside of him, around him and covering him, why he fought so hard to get away from this.  
  
Dean comes with a grunt, hips pushing flush to Sam’s ass, and Sam lays very still until he feels Dean soften and pull out. It’s almost messy enough to put a dent in Sam’s hard-on, and he’s considering saying something bitchy when he feels Dean’s hand creep under his chest. Dean pushes him over, and Sam gets a look at his face, at the raw want there. It’s only a glance, because then Dean’s head is dipping down, down, out of Sam’s sightline until all he can see is the broad bunch of Dean’s shoulders.  
  
Dean’s mouth feels stupidly perfect around Sam’s cock, all wet satin and sucking pressure. Everything except  _fuck_  and Dean’s name flees Sam’s brain for a few moments. Dean’s stubble scratches his stomach and his fingers dig into Sam’s hips. Sam tries to keep his breathing under control, but he’s never had Dean’s discipline. He loses himself and thrusts up once into Dean’s mouth; Dean just adjusts his position and keeps going. Patient big brother, Sam thinks, always forgiving, always accommodating for Sam’s mistakes. For once the thought is comforting rather than humiliating.  
  
Sam arches up when he comes, heels digging into the mattress. Dean swallows it, because he’s  _awesome_ , and then keeps sucking. Sam shudders at the feel of Dean’s mouth drifting aimlessly, along the underside of his shaft, over the rough sack of his balls. He nuzzles until Sam is completely soft in his mouth, spent and licked clean.  
  
Sam is still shivering. “Jesus,” he whispers. He’s drenched in sweat, he can feel Dean’s come leaking out of him, and his dick is cool and damp from Dean’s mouth. He can’t tell if he wants to sleep or shower or wait ten minutes and go again, this time his dick in Dean, Dean’s thighs open for him.  
  
Dean looks up at him, and Sam almost spills everything: his fear, his regret, the precise shade of loneliness of the last five years. Instead, he forces a laugh and says, “You’ve been practicing.”  
  
The moment breaks. Dean blinks, then smiles crookedly. “Jealous, Sammy?”  
  
“After that blowjob? Where can I send the thank you card?”  
  
Dean crawls back up to the pillow. Everything feels strangely jagged, Dean’s face both weapon and balm. It’s a fucked-up, codependent thing they have; it’s not a harlequin romance, and it never has been. But this, this is what’s been calling Sam back all these years.  
  
Dean’s already turning over, showing his freckled back to Sam. Five years forgotten like nothing, tracks in the sand swept away by sex and family and Dean.  
  
“Sleep, dude,” Dean says through a yawn. “In a few hours we’re hunting.”  
  


*

  
_5 Years Ago_  
 _US-119, West Virginia_  
  
 _“Pull over,” Sam orders._  
  
 _“I can make it until Kentucky. We’re fine.”_  
  
 _“Dean, if you don’t pull us over now, I swear to god…”_  
  
 _“Jesus, fine.”_  
  
 _Dean jerks the car off the highway and follows the lodging signs until they roll up to a gritty motel with a flashing vacancy sign. They don’t talk as Dean checks them in and Sam unloads the car. Sam can feel Dean’s eyes on him, and he doesn’t give a shit. His chest still aches from the coughing fit he had earlier today._  
  
All for nothing _, he thinks bitterly._  
  
 _“I’m going out,” Dean says before Sam has even managed to get his duffel unzipped._  
  
 _“Where?”_  
  
 _“Out. You can come or you can stay.”_  
  
 _Dean has been doing that for the last month – throwing down ultimatums between them like a challenge. Like he’s just waiting to see which one will make Sam crack._  
  
 _The anger suffuses Sam like a haze. “Out? You almost just drove us into a tree because you were too stubborn to take a rest. Now you’re going out to drink yourself stupid?”_  
  
 _“Better than sitting here and listening to you bitch the whole night.” Dean’s voice is cold, and Sam wants nothing more than to shove him into a wall, punch him and grab at him and hurt him until he admits that this is his fault, that he fucked them over for good and forever._  
  
 _“I’m so sorry,” he seethes. “I guess I’m a little touchy about the fact that I’m coughing blood and throwing up half my food for no fucking reason.”_  
  
 _Dean takes a step forward. “I warned you,” he says, low and deadly. “I told you exactly what was gonna happen if you took on those trials, and you did it anyway.”_  
  
 _“It didn’t have to go the way it went, and you know it.”_  
  
 _“Yeah? And what was the alternative? A dead brother?”_  
  
 _“Well, you know what? Now you get no brother. I’m out of here.” Sam grabs his bag, and Dean throws his hands up in exasperation._  
  
 _“That’s great. Run again. ‘Cause that’s always worked so well before.”_  
  
 _Sam drops his bag and fists Dean’s collar instead, slamming him back against the wall. “Shut up, shut up, god. Shut your fucking mouth.”_  
  
 _“Make me,” Dean says, pushing back, and it’s so stupid and juvenile and ridiculous that Sam can’t be held responsible for his temper. He can’t be blamed for liking the dull, angry noise of his fist against Dean’s jaw, can’t be blamed for the way Dean’s lip splits against his teeth._  
  
 _Dean staggers back, and then Sam’s shoving at him, pulling at his hair and jerking him forward and shaking him relentlessly._  
  
 _Dean’s holding him back, but his grip is gentle, and that makes Sam even crazier._  
  
 _He pushes Dean backward until Dean’s knees hit the bed, and it’s only then that Sam realizes he’s hard. Because he’s so fucking furious at his brother, and his stupid body can’t tell the difference. It’s adrenaline and violence and Dean, and his brain can only think of Dean’s skin bruising under his, the give of Dean’s body to his own._  
  
 _He leans over and slams his lips against Dean’s, and Dean goes with it, tumbling easily backward. It’s so simple to turn this violence into something else, so simple to shove and bite and pull at Dean until he’s face down on the bed, fingers denting the flattened pillows._  
  
 _Dean tries to push up onto his knees, and Sam shoves him back down. He makes a little gut-punched sound when his chest hits the mattress, and Sam feels his dick twitch in a spurt of arousal._  
  
 _“Stay down,” Sam hisses in his ear. “I don’t want to see your face.”_  
  
 _Dean goes still, face turned to the side. From above him, Sam can see his long lashes brushing his cheeks, the smirking curve of his lips. There’s a fury riding him that he hasn’t felt since Ruby’s blood ran through his veins. He jerks roughly at the waist of Dean’s jeans, ready to tear them off if he has to._  
  
 _“You tell those pants who’s boss,” Dean mumbles, and Sam yanks so hard he drags Dean back onto his side._  
  
 _“Shut up,” Sam snarls. He pulls Dean backwards to reach his buckle, and he feels Dean’s heart fluttering under his ribs. Dean’s cock is stiff when Sam drags his pants down._  
  
 _He shoves Dean forward again and grabs his wrists in one hand. The leather of Dean’s belt leaves red streaks on Dean’s skin when Sam tightens it. Dean’s laughing into the mattress, something low and ugly._  
  
 _“This what it takes to get you off, Sammy? This make you feel in control?”_  
  
 _Sam yanks his head back by the hair and shoves the head of his dick into Dean. Dean grunts, a brief admission of pain, and Sam has to grit his teeth against his own discomfort. Dean’s dry, and it chafes._  
  
 _Dean’s fingers are twitching in their leather prison, and panic washes through Sam in a brief moment of lucidity. What the fuck is he doing?_  
  
 _In a strained voice, Dean says, “Is that all you got?”_  
  
 _Red washes over him. He grabs Dean’s shoulder and shoves the rest of the way in, drawing a groan out of both of them._  
  
 _“Fuck,” Dean whispers, shuddering. Sam starts to pump his hips rhythmically, driven more by the pounding in his head than any pleasure. Dean’s entrance loosens and grows slick, and Sam knows its blood. Dean keeps trying to gets his knees under him, get a better angle, but Sam drags his thighs back every time. It’s brutal, and quick, and when Sam comes it’s nausea that sweeps through him instead of relief. Dean’s back is rising and falling in jerky pants, and he’s limp when Sam rolls him over._  
  
 _They’re still attached, and Sam lowers himself onto Dean, teeth scraping at his jaw and neck. Dean’s wrists are still bound, and he has no choice but to let Sam jerk him off, slow and rough. Sam lets his hand rest over Dean’s throat, wondering what would happen if he pressed. He thinks he could choke Dean out and fuck him again, and Dean would never say a thing. Dean’s been broken since he was four years old, and he’s finally broken Sam along with him. Dean would let the world burn before he disobeyed Dad and let Sam die; Dean would fuck them both over before he faced his own demons._  
  
 _He’s still so fucking angry, but Dean is Dean, infuriating and wrong and more addictive than blood or drugs or power. Dean comes over Sam’s fingers, and Sam presses his forehead into Dean’s chest hard enough to hurt. He eases himself away, and Dean arches convulsively at the shock of cold air and pain. Sam moves down his body, dragging teeth and lips over his chest and stomach as he keeps stroking. He does it until they’re both shuddering, fucked out and furious._  
  
 _Sam stays there for a minute, letting them both come down. Sam loosens the belt, and Dean barely acknowledges it. His green eyes are hazy, and Sam takes it as permission to keep touching, keep tasting, keep owning. Because he can’t take Dean’s betrayal, and he can't make Dean trust him. He’s never felt so trapped, or so fucking helpless._  
  
 _Dean sleeps, but Sam doesn’t. By the time the sun rises, he’s gone, duffel packed and headed for the coast._


	4. Part IV

The cave is every bit as cold as Sam remembers. He and Dean move in single file along the twisting path, Sam leading the way. They both have guns and machetes, even though it won’t do either of them much good when it comes right down to it. Castiel trails behind both of them, keeping watch.  
  
They’d practiced the ritual over and over before Castiel brought them here, until they could match syllable for syllable, cadence and rhythm and tempo.  
  
“You need to round out the A’s,” Sam had said anxiously.  
  
“What’s wrong with my A’s? Maybe you need to flatten yours. You sound like a British butler.”  
  
“Dean! We only get one shot at this.”  
  
“Jesus, okay,” Dean had muttered. “Why can’t we all just speak English?”  
  
The abrupt widening of the cavern is familiar to Sam. He’s ready this time for the bodies chained to the wall, but he feels Dean stiffen next to him. There are two more besides Joanie, and Sam wonders about them, about the ones who don’t make the nightly news. How many victims have he Dean missed in the past because they had no one to report them?  
  
Rachel Johnson’s blond hair is like a flame in the dark cave, and Colin is slumped next to her. Sam moves toward them as though pulled by a string. He hears Dean hiss his name, but he keeps moving. He stops in front of them, swallowing.  
  
He knows Rachel is dead before he even touches her. Her pretty face has taken on a moldy pallor, and she’s absolutely still. There’s the beginning of rot on her lips. She must have died within hours of Sam leaving her here. Maybe she was too far gone already.  
  
“Sorry,” he says softly.  
  
He turns his attention to Colin. He can’t see any movement, but the shadows could be playing tricks on his eyes. The kid’s freckles look like flecks of blood in the dark. Sam sinks to his haunches, chest laden with dread. He must be dead. He was taken only two days after Rachel, and he’s just a kid. Sam reaches out and touches his wrist.  
  
He jerks his hand back like he’s been burned.  
  
“Dean,” he rasps. “Dean, he’s still alive. The kid, he’s…”  
  
“Good, great,” Dean says distractedly. He yanks Sam to his feet by the collar of his jacket. “Don’t fucking wander off. We’re screwed on this one if we don’t stick together.”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Okay.” His heart is hammering, half-fear, half-elation. He can see it now, Colin’s thin chest rising and falling shallowly.  
  
The three new ones are chained right next to each other: Joanie, an old woman with a long braid, and a middle-aged guy in a cheap suit. They’re all still alive, and Sam feels his pulse settle into something steady and determined. Focused.  
  
“The new ones are together. That’ll help,” he says, pointing at the cluster of victims, and Dean nods curtly.  
  
“It’s time,” Castiel says. “It won’t show its face during the day without provocation. You’ll have to draw it out like before.”  
  
“Right,” Dean says, taking a breath. “Here goes nothing.” He readies his machete, and Sam follows his lead. Dean lines the blade up, ever so carefully, with the jugular of the old lady victim.  
  
“Okay you slobbery son of a bitch,” he yells into the darkness. “Come and get me or your gourmet meal is toast.”  
  
For a second, nothing happens. Then the floor begins to shake.  
  
Fuck, fuck, fuck. The thing can move mountains, and they’re fighting it on a stone battlefield. They might as well have handed it a pile of C4.  
  
Dean looks spooked. “What the hell is happening?” he asks, pulling his weapon away. From the walls, a low growl begins to echo.  
  
“Rocks,” Sam tries, and he realizes he’s shouting over the sound of the earth shifting.  “Earthquake. Dean, we have to get – ”  
  
There’s a sound like thunder, and then the ceiling above Dean shatters into sharp slices of granite. Sam watches in horror as Dean goes down under the collapse, disappearing from view.  
  
Somewhere buried beneath the chaos, he understands he’s screaming Dean’s name, screaming his own throat raw. The woman is untouched, but Dean…there are boulders where Dean used to be, and dark splotches on the ground that might be blood. Dean’s machete is lying five feet away, and god, Sam is clawing through the wreck of dirt and stone, shoving aside whatever he can move.  
  
“Dean,” he tries, throat raw with rock dust. “Dean.” Castiel is nowhere to be seen. The walls are still vibrating with growls, a rumbled warning. Sam barely hears it. One of those pieces could crush someone’s ribcage, and fuck, Dean was buried somewhere under them, hurt, but not dead, not possibly dead when Sam had just fucking found him again…  
  
Something sinks into the back of his neck and flings him away like a chew toy. His head hits the wall of the cave, and he struggles to stay on his feet. Between the stars crowding his vision and the thick dust in the air, Sam can barely make out the massive form of the Barghest, slinking toward him. Its eyes are like the prick of a knife, painfully orange. Sam blinks against it, but he can’t move.  
  
 _Knife_ , he tells himself.  _Use your knife_.  
  
The machete hangs limply by his side.  
  
The thing is getting closer, each tread of its paw causing a tremor under Sam’s feet. Pebbles are still skittering across the ground from the force of the earthquake. The pile of rocks that used to be Dean is still and unmoving, and Sam sucks in a shuddery breath. The cold of this place is seeping into him, and the rest of the cave starts to fade out.  
  
 _Dean_ , Sam thinks, half-hysterical. Sam came for Dean, but now Dean is gone and there’s no one to come for Sam. Visions of endless torture in the pit are flipping through his brain. They’re not sticking yet, but they will, he realizes in despair. That, and Dean’s stomach being ripped open by hellhound claws. Jessica burning on the ceiling, eyes helpless and pained. Lucifer always in the corner of Sam’s eyes, pulling out the very worst of Sam and showing it to the world. It’s all coming back, and the walls of Sam’s psyche collapse like a house of cards.  
  
 _There’s only this_ , he thinks in despair,  _for the rest of my life_.  
  
The orange eyes are very close now, indistinguishable from the fire ripping through Sam’s body. Blood and pain, betrayal and loss, and Dean and Dad and everyone Sam’s ever had: gone. Sam feels his knees hit the ground, feels hot breath cover his face. Bloody jaws open over him, and Sam tilts his head back, helplessly caught. Teeth set firmly against his throat, and he closes his eyes.  
  
“Sam!”  
  
There’s a spray of blood that has Sam jerking back, and another earth-shaking roar. Then hands are hauling him up, Dean’s hands on his face, Dean’s eyes clear and fiercely worried and not dead. Not dead.  
  
“Dean,” he says again, because he might be a broken record at this point.  
  
“Get it together,” Dean shouts in his face. “That thing almost got you. This doesn’t work with you chained to the wall, remember?”  
  
“Rocks,” Sam manages. “You – ” Dean feels very solid under his hands, not at all like a hallucination.  
  
“Cas,” Dean says, giving him another shake. “Cas moves quick. Angel, remember?”  
  
Sam remembers. Sam can’t quite remember how to speak more than one word at a time, but he remembers Cas. They have a fucking angel on their side and Dean, Dean isn’t dead.  
  
“Yeah,” Sam says dazedly. “Okay, yeah.” Two words. Excellent.  
  
“Okay,” Dean says impatiently. “Hand.”  
  
Sam holds out his palm, and Dean slices ruthlessly into it. He repeats the motion on his own palm. Dean jams their hands together in some violent parody of a lover’s embrace.  
  
“If anyone asks, this never happened,” he mutters.  
  
Sam doesn’t care. He tightens his grip.  
  
“Okay,” Dean says, soft and deadly. “Now where the fuck did it go?”  
  
They wait, the dust literally settling around them. Sam can feel Dean’s pulse pounding against his own palm.  
  
There’s a split second that’s too still, a snap of quiet in the echoing cavern. Then the Barghest lunges from just feet in front of them, teeth bared.  
  
“Cas!” Dean screams.  
  
Angel light has a sound to it, a keening. It splits the cave like a knife and then there’s sunlight pouring in from the hole Cas punched in the ceiling. It floods the great dog’s prison in a kind of counterpoint to the ancient ritual.  
  
Dean speaks it perfectly, rounded vowels and all.  
  
The Barghest freezes, exposed and vulnerable. In the light, it’s not a monster or a giant – it’s a dog, blood matting its back where Dean sliced into it. It’s eyes, frightening in the dark, are a pale, malevolent yellow. Its teeth are bared. The growling crescendos into one long howl of pain and rage, cut to an abrupt stop when Dean’s machete slices through its neck.

*

  
_5 Years Ago_   
_Lebanon, Kansas_   
  
_Dean has his own room, and Sam can’t begrudge him that. Sam had a room at Stanford, an apartment with Jess, a house with Amelia. He’s fallen asleep in his own bed, rearranged furniture, painted his own walls._   
  
_Still, it’s a barrier between them._   
  
_Sam is sick, and Dean carries his fear around like a stench, and when Sam can’t take it, he crawls into Dean’s bed instead of his own. He always apologizes when Dean slides in next to him, but he doesn’t think Dean really cares, anyway._   
  
_The final trial looms, and more than once he wakes up with Dean’s face in his stomach, shaking arms around Sam’s narrowing hips._   
  
_“You can’t follow me,” Sam tells him. “Whatever the last trial is, I have to finish it.”_   
  
_“That’s shit advice,” Dean says, and the vibration of his words tickles Sam’s skin. “I didn’t follow you into hell, and look what happened.”_   
  
_“That’s…” Sam starts, then trails off. He’s not sure what he can say. He’s tried to pack Dean off to normalcy and safety once before; it didn’t take._   
  
_“Anyway,” Dean continues. “You’re not dying, so quit talking like that.”_   
  
_“But if something goes wrong – ”_   
  
_Dean picks his head up, and there’s a fierce glitter in his eyes. “If something goes wrong, it will have to go through me before it gets to you. And I don’t give a fuck, Sam. As long as I’m around, I’ll follow you until I’m in bloody pieces. You get me?”_   
  
_It’s not what Sam wants; it’s not what he’s ever asked for. But this is how Dean loves – stubborn and relentless, consuming and violent. Right now, when every minute unfolds with the sweet urgency of a clock winding down, it’s almost a comfort._   
  
_“Big talk,” he says through a yawn. “What the hell am I gonna do with you if you’re in bloody pieces?”_   
  
_He drifts off, but not before he hears Dean say, “Put me back together.”_

*

  
They bring Joanie, Colin, and the other two survivors to the hospital. Colin is rushed away immediately, but Joanie is awake and wailing by the time the doctors take her out of Sam’s arms.  
  
“Will she be all right?” Sam asks anxiously. He can still feel the imprint her grubby little fingers left on his neck.  
  
“Fluids and a bath, and she’ll be fine,” the nurse says in a soothing voice, and Sam realizes he probably looks worse than the newest victims. He’s bleeding from a dozen tiny scratches, and a glance he caught in a passing window showed him his own face streaked in dirt and sweat.  
  
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Dean talking to the local police chief. Dean is as bloody and dirty as Sam, but his face is alert and animated, his stance radiating competence. Their FBI cover won’t fool the cops for more than a day or two, but by then they’ll be long gone.  
  
“36 west, 41 north,” Dean says patiently. “That’s where you’ll find the rest of them. No sign of the perpetrator when we arrived.”  
  
The chief slants him a suspicious look. “You and your partner look pretty beaten up for no perp.”  
  
“Rock slide,” Dean says succinctly. “Dangerous turf up there.”  
  
They give the cop the number to Garth’s FBI line, then excuse themselves under the guise of “official paperwork.” Sam ducks into Colin’s room on the way out, but he’s still unconscious, tubes in his arms and mouth leading to machines that are breathing for him, beating his heart, keeping him alive.  
  
“Are you family?” one of the night nurses asks behind him. “Only family members are allowed before noon.”  
  
“No, FBI,” Sam says through the lump in his throat. “I found him. What’s his prognosis? Is he gonna wake up?”  
  
The nurse bites her lip, eyes gone soft in her tired face. “Too soon to tell. Give a call back tomorrow, after the next round of tests. K, hon?”  
  
Sam’s not sure what it is about his six-foot-four two-hundred-pound frame that inspires the endearment. He must look as lost as he feels, which is never a good thing.  
  
“Thanks,” he says. “I’ll uh…let my office know.” He turns and walks out quickly.  
  
Castiel has been trailing them the whole time, an invisible prickle at the back of Sam’s neck. He appears outside the hospital, abruptly enough to make Dean jump and curse.  
  
“I’ll take you back,” he says. Sam begins to protest that they can catch a bus, but before he gets the words out, they’re back in the hotel room, watching the curtains flutter from Castiel’s wings.  
  
“Is there anything more I can do?” He directs the question toward Dean, but Sam clears his throat.  
  
“The kid we rescued, Colin. Is there any way you could heal him? Like you did with Dean.”  
  
Castiel is shaking his head before Sam’s even through talking. “He’s too far gone, Sam. And I’ve already intervened in the natural order once during this mission. Now, it has to be between him and Death.”  
  
Sam wants to argue. Castiel has healed him and Dean countless times over the last ten years, and he and Dean are misguided at best, apocalyptic fuck-ups at worst. Why the hell can’t Colin Murphy get just one do-over?  
  
But Castiel has already done so much: brought Sam here, saved Dean twice, helped them in a way no earthly hunter could have. He doesn’t have it in him to ask for more.  
  
“Right,” he says. “I get it, I guess. Thanks, Cas. For everything.”  
  
Dean walks Castiel outside, and Sam pretends he’s not watching through the slit in the curtains. Dean claps Castiel on the back with an ease that has Sam’s throat tightening to an ache. Then Castiel is gone, and Dean’s left looking upward. His steps back to the door are very slow, and Sam can’t shake the feeling that he’s reluctant to come back inside.  
  
“So,” Dean says, when he’s locked the door behind him.  
  
“So.”  
  
“Thanks for your help on this one.”  
  
“Yeah. Of course.”  
  
“You want to use the shower before you take off?”  
  
Sam wants to collapse into one of the queen beds and sleep until he forgets about Colin Murphy and Rachel Johnson, but his jacket is still flecked with dog blood, and he smells like earth and death.  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
He stays under the spray for a long time, and when he emerges, Dean has laid out a pair of jeans and a flannel for him. His own jeans, the right length and everything. There’s a pizza on the table that Sam didn’t hear arrive, and Dean is a third of the way through it.  
  
“Half of it’s veggies,” Dean says around a mouthful of crust. “Healthiest you’re gonna get tonight.”  
  
It’s pretty stupid that Sam kind of wants to cry.  
  
He eats his half while Dean showers, then gets a lukewarm beer from the fridge. It’s ten years ago, Sam thinks, and Jess is gone and Dad is gone and Dean is all he has in the world. And Dean is infuriating and controlling, self-destructive and deadly, aims words like knives and drinks and fucks himself hollow. And he loves loves loves Sam so much it makes Sam’s teeth ache, so much that Sam can’t ever get his heart around it, can’t ever catalog it in all its enormity. Sam sees it now, in a way he couldn’t when he was twenty-five and terrified and angry.  
  
Neither of them forgives, and they’re both half-broken without the other.  
  
“You shouldn’t drink and drive.” Dean breaks his reverie, toweling his hair dry from the bathroom door. “I heard that somewhere.”  
  
Sam looks at the empty beer that hasn’t so much as dulled his trigger finger. “Yeah, I heard that too. Besides,” he realized with a ridiculous suddenness, “I don’t have anything to drive. My car is still in San Diego.”  
  
Dean’s mouth quirks, tired and sad. “Then I’ll drive you to the bus station in the morning.”  
  
It knocks the breath out of Sam for a second, the unexpectedness of that blow.  
  
“Right,” he says when he can manage. “Thanks. I guess.”  
  
If Dean hears the uncertainty in Sam’s voice, he doesn’t acknowledge it.  
  
“I’m beat,” he says. “See you mañana.”  
  
He starts to pull back the covers on the bed closest to the door, and Sam is on his feet before he really has time to think about it.  
  
“I don’t want to go,” he blurts. “Dean, think about this. We needed each other on this case. Do you really want to – ”  
  
He stops, because Dean isn’t looking at him, is looking down at where his fingers have clawed into the bedspread.  
  
“Look at me,” he says, and Dean does. His face is calm and resolved.  
  
“I don’t want you to go,” Dean says in a very low voice, “but I think this experiment has already failed, don’t you?”  
  
“Our lives are not an  _experiment_ , Christ, Dean.”  
  
“But they are.” Dean shakes his head. “Whatever it is – destiny or just shit luck – people depend on us. We’re  _responsible_ , and we can’t be responsible for other people when we’re together.  _I_  can’t…five years ago…” He stops, shoulders bowed.  
  
“I would make the same choice again,” he finishes.  
  
“So would I,” Sam says fiercely. “And I don’t give a shit. We fucked up five years ago, so what?”  
  
“ _So what_? So we let Crowley win! We killed god knows how many people by letting demons keep roaming around. Sam, before we opened that hell gate, demons were practically extinct up here. And you and me couldn’t even….” He trails off.  
  
“We saved three people today. We couldn’t have done that without each other.”  
  
Sam can see the stubborn jut of Dean’s jaw, smooth and golden beneath his stubble. “Doesn’t really equal out.”  
  
This conversation is spiraling quickly out of control. Sam’s not sure what he expected by asking to stay, but it wasn’t this…this defeat.  
  
Sam takes a couple deep breaths and tries to compose himself. He can’t be sure anymore of who’s at fault. Here, in this place, with Dean narrowly alive and Sam more alive than he’s been in five years, it no longer matters. Intro to Law basics: gather evidence first, argue second. And sometimes, compromise is the only option.  
  
“I shouldn’t have asked what I did five years ago,” he says in a voice far more controlled than he feels.  “I wouldn’t have been able to watch you die, and I shouldn’t have asked it of you.”  
  
“I should have trusted you to get the job done,” Dean says. He’s looking down again, but his death grip on the quilt hasn’t lessened. “Doesn’t matter.”  
  
Dean is resolved, and nothing Sam says is going to change anything. Not tonight, anyway.  
  
“You know what? I can’t talk about this anymore. I just want sleep.”  
  
If anything, Dean’s expression darkens. Sam yanks the covers from his hands and crawls past him into the bed. Dean’s mouth is tight, but Sam can read the interest in his eyes. He bites his lip, and Sam follows the motion.  
  
“Really? You think  _now_  is a good time?” Dean asks skeptically.  
  
“Do you want a blowjob or not?”  
  
Sam sucks him off, good and long to pay him back for the night before. Dean is still pissed, Sam can feel it in every line of his body, but his hands on Sam’s head are very gentle. Dean doesn’t want him to go – Dean has  _never_  wanted him to go – and Sam will do what he has to until Dean gives in. If that means blowjobs, so be it.  
  
He crawls into the other bed afterward, because there’s still too much tension between them to make spooning anything but awkward. Dean turns away from him, and Sam watches his breaths even out in sleep. Maybe he’ll have to go all the way back to California; maybe he’ll have to get Castiel to intervene again. Either way, he’s not going back to being alone, and neither is Dean.

*

  
The morning is gorgeous and sunny, with the barest promise of sticky heat to come. Dean is up first, and Sam hears him moving around the room – sweeping away salt lines, wiping their fingerprints from the empties, erasing anything that might point the local police to their true identities.  
  
They get ready in silence, but its echo is less like five years of baggage and more like the aftermath of a one-night stand. They’re careful not to touch each other, and Sam feels light, lighter than he has since he woke up in a shithole hospital five years ago, Dean pale and guilty by his side.  
  
Sam re-packs his duffel, washes up, and then raps gently on the wall to get Dean’s attention.  
  
Dean blinks at him. “You want to go now? I still have to check out.”  
  
Sam clears his throat. “No, man, it’s okay. I can hitch. You don’t need to drive me. It’s probably in the wrong direction anyway.”  
  
“No, it’s…sure. If that’s what you want.”  
  
Dean is leaning against the wall, broad shoulders and slim hips and handsome, sloping cheekbones. He’s like one of the action heroes in his cheesy nineties action flicks, and Sam thinks if they weren’t brothers, if he hadn’t grown up listening to Dean fart and swear and dork out over every Patrick Swayze movie ever made, he’d just fall in love and be lost. He compliments himself briefly on being smarter than that, on remembering that Dean is sort of an idiot, even when he looks like this, brooding green eyes and all.  
  
Dean moves, and Sam realizes belatedly that he’s about to be hugged. Dean pulls him close, and Sam can’t help but hug him back, even though things are strange and unsettled between them.  
  
“It was good to see you, Sammy,” Dean murmurs in his ear, and then he’s pulling away with a last clap on the back. “Don’t be a stranger,” he says, and his voice sounds thick.  
  
“Yeah. You too.”  
  
Sam turns, then turns immediately back. “Do you really want me to go?” he asks carefully.  
  
Dean won’t look at him. His mouth is drawn, his eyes strangely bright, and Sam realizes he won’t ask for this. Dean won’t let himself have this impossible wish, that they might be able to glue themselves back together again, one more time. There have already been too many chances, too many mistakes, and Dean lost his optimism a long time ago. But Sam…  
  
Sam has always been able to wish hard enough for both of them.  
  
He waits in silence for a few more seconds, watching the uncertainty on Dean’s face. The wistfulness.  
  
“Look,” he says. “We don’t have to decide now.”  
  
Dean’s eyes snap to his.  
  
“We can, I don’t know. Get breakfast? See if there’s another hunt in the area.” He holds his breath.  
  
Dean swallows, then nods. In the morning light, he looks every minute of his forty years, roughened skin and gray hair glinting at his temples. Sam’s  _pissed_  he missed those changes, pissed at both of them for letting it happen. They’re so stupid together, so ridiculous and stubborn to waste five years when they’ve been to hell and back for each other.  
  
“Okay,” Dean says. “Breakfast sounds good.”  
  
Sam takes care not to smile. Best not to show all his cards around Dean. “Okay,” he says.  
  
Dean checks out while Sam does a last sweep of the room. The routine feels natural, like it’s been five days instead of five years.  
  
They step out into the sunshine and Sam asks, “Can I drive?”  
  
“Are you on drugs?” Dean returns immediately, and Sam shrugs.  
  
“Just checking.”  
  
“You ride bitch. No amount of time will ever change that, Sammy.”  
  
The Impala is still parked where Sam left it three days ago. It feels different being in the passenger seat. The creak of the door is familiar, the give of the shocks under his weight and the smell of leather welcoming him like he never left.  
  
“I want hash browns,” Dean announces to no one in particular. “And something with animal fat.” The corners of his mouth have relaxed a bit, and Sam feels his own shoulders relax in answering relief.  
  
“You’re gross.”  
  
“Says you, Samantha.”  
  
 _Grow up_ , Sam thinks about saying.  _Don’t call me that. It’s a miracle you haven’t had a heart attack yet._  
  
“Are we driving, or what?” he asks.

*

  
They’ve almost hit the county limits when Sam gets a call from the hospital. He hears the nurse’s words, but it takes a few seconds to penetrate.  
  
“Thanks,” he says dumbly, and hangs up.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Colin. He’s awake.”  
  
“Absolutely not,” Dean says. “We saved him. Our job is done.”  
  
Sam looks at him, and Dean sighs.  
  
“Fine. You get ten minutes.” He turns the car around.  
  
Colin’s room is dim and quiet, but for the beeping of the machines. He’s staring vacantly out the window at the hospital parking lot.  
  
Sam knocks on the doorframe, and Colin’s head turns sluggishly. “Hey,” Sam says. “They told me you were awake.”  
  
“What do you want?” Colin asks dully. His voice is nasal from the cannula in his noise. His eyes are bruised a hollow purple over his pale skin.  
  
“I just wanted to check on you. I’m…uh. I’m the one who found you. Me and my partner.”  
  
Colin doesn’t respond. He stares belligerently, and Sam has a fleeting thought that this was a bad idea. First rule of hunting is don’t get dead. The second is: they almost never say thank you.  
  
“Anyway…I’m glad you’re okay,” Sam continues awkwardly. “It was touch and go there for a while. This is a good hospital.”  
  
Colin turns away again. “You should have left me,” Sam hears, and he cringes. Dean is probably already getting impatient. A few more minutes and he’ll be calling.  
  
“Look,” Sam says. “I know that feeling, but…. Finding lost people is my job.”  
  
“Thanks a lot,” Colin says. “You’re a real hero.”  
  
“You’re only twelve,” Sam tries. “You’ve got…”  
  
“A lot to live for?” Colin asks, and Sam realizes he’s wiping at his eyes. “Save it. I’ve got a therapist already.”  
  
“I know you miss your family – ”  
  
“You don’t know shit,” Colin says. He turns back, his thin face masked in grief and fury. “My whole family is gone. What the fuck did you save me for? I could have been with them again. Now I don’t have anyone.”  
  
Sam thinks Colin is probably right – he doesn’t know shit. Dean carried them both out of that burning house when Sam was a baby, and he hasn’t ever really been alone since. Not when Dean was in hell or purgatory, not when they spent five years apart. Sam’s always had something to hang on to.  
  
But…  
  
Sam extracts the photo of Colin’s family from his pocket and lays it gently on the cheap hospital tray. “We rescued a little girl. Joanie. You’ll meet her when you’re well enough to go home.”  
  
Colin’s mouth trembles as he looks down at the photo. “That church isn’t my home. And she’s not my little sister.”  
  
Sam shrugs. “Maybe not. Doesn’t mean she couldn’t use a big brother.”  
  
Colin averts his eyes, and Sam takes a step back. “I don’t have answers for you,” he says. “But I’m glad you’re okay, even if you’re not.” He leaves the room and tries not to look back.  
  
Dean has parked by the curb, arm hanging out of the Impala’s open window. “So?” he asks as Sam lowers himself into the passenger seat.  
  
“So he’s pissed. Wouldn’t you be?”  
  
Dean shrugs. “Probably. Anyone else you want to say goodbye to, Dorothy? Or are you ready?”

Sam leans back into the leather. “Ready.”

End


End file.
